It was another league defeat against our old rivals from up the M5 on Saturday, but boy was it a humdinger of a game of rugby. At the start of the day I would have been happy to take two points away from Kingsholm, but if we had managed to cut out a few of the basic errors we could have been celebrating a five-point haul on the way back to Bristol.
Although we are left to rue the passes that went astray, the kicks that didn’t find touch and the lineouts that fell into the wrong hands, this was a battling performance by the Bears. Even Joe Joyce, the King of Southmead, was bloodied but unbowed come the end and in Ellis Genge we have a true leader on the pitch that galvanises the team around him.
The trip to Gloucester is always one of the fixtures I look forward to in the season. It is a city that loves its rugby and as you walked through the streets on Saturday you could see flags draped from bars, restaurants and shops. Every pub was full of fans bedecked in the famous cherry and white, ruminating on the game ahead.
And no trip to Kingsholm, a name that wouldn’t be out of place in Game of Thrones, would be complete without watching a match from the infamous Shed that runs along one touchline. This is rugby at its best, two sets of rival fans, mixing together and wearing their club colours with pride.
Of course, being vastly outnumbered in the Shed as a visiting Bears fan, you are on the end of some Cotswold wit and cheeky banter throughout the 80 minutes. But at the end of the game it is handshakes all round and a beer or two discuss the result form our partisan viewpoints.
With the sad demise of Worcester Warriors, Pat and the team now have two weeks to prepare the first team squad for the next league game, which will kick off a tough run of fixtures against Saints, Saracens, South Africa and Sale Sharks. That’s a lot of S’s in a row! Throw in a couple more derbies in the Premiership Cup away at Bath and Gloucester and it is going to be quite a month of rugby.
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