high-profile letdown against the Bears just before Christmas<\/a>. \u201cIt was nice to get a little bit of revenge from that big game,\u201d said Gilmore.<\/p>\nQuick GuidePrem roundup: Leicester inflict ‘disastrous first 20 minutes’ on GloucesterShow![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4971.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
George Skivington was angry with parts of his Gloucester side\u2019s performance after seeing them comfortably beaten 36-17 by in-form Leicester at Villa Park. It was Gloucester\u2019s first visit to the Premier League football ground but they blew any chance of making it a fruitful one by conceding 22 points in the opening 16 minutes and were never able to recover. They did show some spirit to score three times as Leicester became careless and disjointed with the Slater Cup already safely in the bag.<\/p>\n
Jamie Blamire, with two, Will Wand, Gabriel Hamer-Webb, Orlando Bailey and Harry Wells were Leicester\u2019s try-scorers, with Billy Searle adding two conversions and James O\u2019Connor one.\u00a0Matias Alemanno, Will Joseph and Dian Bleuler scored Gloucester\u2019s tries, one of which Charlie Atkinson converted.<\/p>\n
Skivington said: \u201cI\u2019m trying to calm down but if I was picking a team now for next week, there would certainly be some changes in it. It was a disastrous first 20 minutes with a couple of key moments whereby individual players chose not to be more challenging in the tackle. There was also an issue at scrum time.”<\/p>\n
The Slater Cup is played for between the two clubs in honour of their former player Ed Slater (pictured with Ollie Chessum), who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2022.<\/p>\n
The Exeter forwards coach Ross McMillan said his side executed their gameplan\u00a0very well in Friday’s 38-14 win at Newcastle. In a ruthless opening 25 minutes\u00a0 at at Kingston Park Paul Brown-Bampoe scored twice either side of Campbell Ridl\u2019s effort before Olly Woodburn bagged the bonus point. Ridl scored his second try before the break and Stephen Varney struck immediately after the restart.<\/p>\n
McMillan said: \u201cEspecially in games that start the way that they did, you have ebbs and flows in the game and it\u2019s hard to maintain that. It\u2019s probably an area we want to make sure we get right again if we get the opportunity to do that. The start of the game looked exactly how we wanted it to go. Fair play to our players, they executed the plan very well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Newcastle’s head coach, Stephen Jones, was disappointed by the start but hoped his side could see it as a lesson.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ve got some really good learnings as a group tonight. We\u2019re blooding some young players,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cOur group will be better for this experience. From a coaching perspective I\u2019ll be better for it as well. I know some areas we can push, especially for next week.\u201d PA Media<\/p>\n
Photograph: Nathan Stirk\/Getty Images Europe<\/p>\n
Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe spoke a lot about our mindset and what we wanted to do. We wanted to dictate terms through the contact and line speed and I thought the boys did that in spades tonight. There\u2019s still a lot of work to do at this club but today was more like us from last year.\u201d<\/p>\n
That had not seemed a particularly likely scenario before kick-off but Alex Dombrandt and the entire Quins back-row rolled their sleeves up from the start, the No 8 plunging over from close range after 22 minutes to underline his side\u2019s intent. Bristol can begin to look mortal in a stop-start game if their talented backs are unable to keep fizzing the ball from side to side.<\/p>\n
Even the pacy Louis Rees-Zammit struggled to escape his pursuers and the full-back\u2019s mixed performance was hardly the home town antidote he wanted after a Six Nations campaign that delivered only one Welsh win in five attempts.<\/p>\n
Rodrigo Isgr\u00f3 (centre) leads the celebrations after he scored Harlequins\u2019 second try on Saturday. Photograph: Michael Steele\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
At least hiring out their stadium will earn the cash-strapped Welsh Rugby Union a few extra quid but inviting the Prem tanks on to their covered lawn is a calculated risk. In an ideal world, the locals would love an annual brace of Anglo-Welsh big games between Cardiff and the Bears rather than watching their teams disappear off to South Africa to play opponents with whom they have neither much historical beef nor intense geographical rivalry.<\/p>\n
This particular contest, though, was not a spectacular advert for the superiority of the rival product from across the Severn Bridge. The last half hour did at least have a bit more edge, particularly after Jarrod Evans had put his side ahead 8-7 with a simple 51st-minute penalty for not releasing in the tackle.<\/p>\n
Quick GuideTeams and scorersShow<\/p>\n
Bristol Bears: Rees-Zammit; Ravouvou, Moroni (Janse van Rensburg, 49), Williams, Boshoff (Ibitoye, 52); Jordan, Randall (Marmion, 62); Genge (Woolmore, 60), Oghre, Kloska (Chawatama, 69), Dun (Taylor, 71), Owen, Luatua, Harding (capt), S Grondona (B Grondona, 71). Not used: Gwilliam. <\/p>\n
Tries: Harding, Luatua. Cons: Williams 2. <\/p>\n
Harlequins: Benson; Isgr\u00f3, Murley, Bradley, David; Evans (Kerr, 60), Townsend (Grant, 68); Kerrod (Hobson, 50), Walker (Riley, 50), Jones (Delgado, 34), Treadwell (Carr, 56), Williams (Green, 50), Petti, Kenningham (Driscoll, 56), Dombrandt (capt). <\/p>\n
Tries: Dombrandt, Isgr\u00f3. Con: Benson. Pens: Evans, Benson. <\/p>\n
Referee: A Leal. Att: 45,119<\/p>\n
Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n
Surely Bristol could not become Quins\u2019 first away victims of a desperately disappointing season? The longer the game lasted, though, the more the visitors\u2019 confidence began to grow and they fully merited their second try, Isgr\u00f3 leaving his station on the right wing to arc around the midfield defence and score near the posts to reward a purposeful period of pressure. When the Bears were plotting their big day out this major jolt was not remotely part of the plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In theory Bristol\u2019s Big Day Out concept in Cardiff had all the right ingredients. Here was a chance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-500716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}