No amount of painkillers or sleepy tea is helping me sleep so I thought I'd put down a few thoughts.
Firstly, I hope that Billy Searle is able to recover well, here hoping the damage is as little as possible.
Secondly, woo-hoo! 5 points and up to 4th, at the end of the day that's what matters and a bonus point win away after such a lot of negativity is fantastic.
Will Rowlands - aside from the penalty at the end (which he partial redeemed by going through the middle of their maul forcing them to break off and Thomas Young to bring it down legally) I thought he had a good game - 14 carries (more than anyone else), 13 tackles with none missed and 74 metres made (admittedly most of those in the one break) and the try.
Thomas Young - If he does go after next year, what a miss he will be. What a fantastic player - carries, tackles, link play, speed and turnovers. Best 7 playing in the country for me.
The slightly more negative side is what the stats say (sorry this is a bit stats based, I know if doesn't tell the whole story but this is what happens wen you look at ESPN at 3am): in attack, between them, our centres made just 7 passes all game (Bristol's made 24). Despite playing nearly the whole second half, Lima only touched the ball 7 times I think. We played off Dan at 9 so much, I know that quite a bit is down to running the clock down at the end, but Dan made 102 passes, our 10s made 19.
In defence I loved that we were closing down the space but we seemed to leave dog legs and gaps for them to make line breaks almost at will (they made 20 clean breaks) and we missed 23 tackles (WLR missed all 3 tackles with 0 made).
Ultimately though we found a way to win and that is what matters, same again against Sale would be fine by me. The other bonus of playing on Friday of course is the extra two days rest.
Always a Wasp
