Newcastle v Bristol: Five takeaways as England ‘should be excited’ by Benhard Janse van Rensburg but injury ‘subplot’ again comes to the fore
Bristol Bears centre Benhard Janse van Rensburg (right) impressed in their win over Newcastle Red Bulls
Following Bristol Bears’ thumping 52-19 win over Newcastle Red Bulls at Kingston Park, here are our five key takeaways from the round 13 PREM clash.
The top line
Bristol Bears moved to within striking distance of a top-four finish in the PREM with an eight-try dismantling of Newcastle Red Bulls on Friday night. The win, following last week’s 53-12 destruction of Gloucester, lifts Pat Lam’s side back into serious semi-final contention with three rounds to play. Four points separate them from fourth-placed Exeter Chiefs, who travel to Kingsholm on Sunday.
Rich Lane, Kalaveti Ravouvou, Tom Jordan, Noah Heward, Matias Moroni, Harry Thacker and Benhard Janse van Rensburg with a brace shared the scoring. Newcastle Red Bulls responded through Adam Brocklebank, Christian Wade and Josh Hodge, the latter on his first home appearance since returning to the club. The scoreline flattered no one and, at times, it seemed that Bristol Bears never moved out of third gear.
For Newcastle, this was a 10th consecutive defeat in all competitions, extending a home record that now reads four straight losses at Kingston Park, every one of them leaking 26 points or more. Stephen Jones asked his side to dominate the collisions this week. They did not. The story is one of concentration rather than concept. Ravouvou’s try was his 11th of the season, lifting him to second in the league’s try-scoring chart. Wade’s was his 95th in the competition, six shy of Chris Ashton’s all-time record. On a night when almost nothing went right for the home side, those are the consolations worth banking.
Bristol’s midfield axis is the best in the Premiership
Jordan is beginning to look like the most complete fly-half in the Prem outside the regular Test set, and the 10-12 combination he has built with Janse van Rensburg is the one other clubs will be studying on Monday. Scotland will take enormous comfort from what they are watching whilst England, equally, should be excited about the man standing outside him. For 40 minutes, the pair ran the game at precisely the tempo they chose, with Moroni offering the third point of a triangle that cut Newcastle to ribbons.
Jordan’s try in the 24th minute came from a short restart chase that panicked the home defence into an unaligned line. His work for the fifth try, Moroni’s, was something else entirely. He took a Janse van Rensburg exit, kicked, regathered, and delivered a soft offload that put Moroni under the posts. Any of the world’s top fly-halves would have signed off on the execution. However, bad news came when Lane pulled his hamstring finishing the earlier try that came from the same area, cruel timing for a player who cannot buy a fitness run.
The partnership between the Scottish 10 and Janse van Rensburg is thriving; the bigger unit outside, offering the ball-carrier who bends the defensive line and creates the half-metre Jordan needs. That is the axis Lam has built Bristol Bears around.
And you can bet your life that Steve Borthwick has a calendar on his desk with BJvR pencilled into the September 1st box, and a red circle round it.
Newcastle’s failures
The numbers are a brutal read.
Newcastle Red Bulls finished the evening with a tackle success rate of 65 per cent, which is not a Prem figure. They entered the Bristol 22 on 40 phases of possession and extracted 12 points.
Bristol visited the Newcastle 22 on eight phases and extracted 33. The efficiency gap is fivefold. You do not win Prem matches with conversion rates that poor at either end of the pitch.
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The failures tonight were, at times, matters of simple structural engineering, which is almost the more frustrating aspect of watching them. Brocklebank scored a beautifully-worked try from a trick lineout, then missed a simple tackle on Jordan 60 seconds later that cost the score straight back.
Wade had two first-quarter line-breaks that a routine pass would have turned into tries, but the pull of ChrisAshton’s record is bending his instincts towards finishing rather than feeding others.
What is also missing is the concentration to stitch those moments together for 80 minutes. Newcastle Red Bulls do not have the individual match-winners required to absorb mental lapses. Stardust simply does not exist at Kingston Park.
They need structural excellence and discipline to compete in this competition, and tonight they had neither.
Bristol’s injury list is becoming a genuine problem
The subplot running beneath Bristol’s dominance is an injury list that is beginning to look alarming.
Lam arrived in the North East with 17 players already on the treatment table. Joe Batley went off in the warm-up with a hamstring. Lane’s hamstring tightened as he finished his try. Benjamin Grondona was withdrawn with his arm in a sling, a loss the Bears will feel more than most, given how quietly enormous his season has been. Gabriel Oghre followed shortly afterwards, a blow England will also register, given his scrummaging is comfortably the best of the emerging group of hookers. Heward hobbled off in the second half with a fifth hamstring of the evening.
Lam was phlegmatic about it, as he always is, and spoke of the next men going deep into the sock drawer. He is right that those who came on did their jobs.
The five-point haul is the number that matters for a side four points off fourth with three rounds to play, and Lam himself was quick to flag that points difference could decide the race for fourth. Bristol Bears have to protect bodies from here to May.
If the business end of the season arrives with his first-choice midfield only half fit, repeating tonight’s performance becomes very difficult indeed.
Kingston Park is getting everything right apart from the rugby
Credit where it is due. The match experience at Kingston Park has come an enormous distance in a very short time.
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Good music, genuinely good food and drink, a proper welcome, and attendances that tell their own story. Average gates now sit at close to 10,000 thousand inside a stadium that seats 10,250.
That is a 42 per cent uplift on the 2016/17 season and close to a doubling of the crowd that came through the turnstiles in 2013/14. The Red Bull rebrand, much mocked when it was announced, has coincided with real commercial traction and a visibly improved day out. 10 straight losses have not dented that. The fans keep turning up.
In times gone by, the ground was so dimly lit, and the floodlights so feeble, that a winger could have scored a hat-trick in the far corner and nobody in the stands would have been any the wiser. Someone clearly listened, because something akin to industrial lasers have now been bolted to the old clubhouse roof, firing precision beams at head-height straight into the press box and comms area.
The press box is lit like a Bond villain’s interrogation room, and, as a result, the combined press corps are prepared to confess to crimes they did not commit. To the hospitality team, though, full marks: they are so good they will probably bring an ice pack for the retinal burns.
What Newcastle Red Bulls have built around the game is working. What happens between the whitewashes is the next problem to solve.
READ MORE: PREM Rugby round 14: Predictions, teams, kick-off times, how to watch and referee appointments