After a bright-ish start we are once again slipping alarmingly fast down the oft-quoted Premiership mountain with four consecutive defeats and the same failings from last season rearing its ugly head, namely ‘consistent inconsistency’, both between games and within them.
I’m sure the players are just as disappointed as the fans and we have to believe that none of them go out to drop the ball, miss a tackle or make a wrong decision on purpose, but the fact is that professional sport is a results-driven game and when the results dry up the hard questions start getting asked.
After the agonising defeat at Gloucester there was hope that the improvements seen in that Friday night pressure cooker would be translated into an even more positive performance on the road at Northampton, but rather than go from good to great, the Bears went instead from good to ‘give it to them on a plate’ as a promising start at Franklin’s Gardens disintegrated into a first-half horror show.
Forget Halloween, Saints fans must have thought that Christmas had come early as they watched Bristol gift their team a try bonus point by 32 minutes. It’s true that Northampton have a dangerous back line but if you turn over the ball cheaply and allow them to run straight through you from distance then you are not just asking for trouble, you are begging for it.
The second half was an improvement of sorts but the psychological damage had been done. Optimists may point out that Bristol got back within touching distance after Harry Thacker’s second try but realists will emphasise that rather than grabbing that momentum by the scruff of the neck and frog marching it back into the Saints’ half, the Bears did what they always do and gave it straight back, gift wrapped and with a pretty bow, by immediately conceding a silly penalty from which the opposition scored their sixth try.
So where do we go from here, apart from into a darkened room to weep? To be honest I don’t know but the team cannot afford to let the costs of individual mistakes outweigh the benefits of individual brilliance. Rather, take every game as it comes, work hard on the basics and play for the jersey. Up the Bears!
You can listen to Bears Beyond the Gate on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Spotify and Buzzsprout
