Following Bristol Bears’ 19-17 win over Sale Sharks at Ashton Gate, here are our five key takeaways from Friday night’s blockbuster PREM clash.
The top line
Kalaveti Ravouvou struck eight minutes from time to break Sale hearts, win an absorbing encounter and send Bristol Bears to the top of the Gallagher Prem.
A freezing night in the West Country saw the visitors control a hugely physical encounter until Rekeiti Ma’asi-White was sin-binned 15 minutes from time.
That setback, added to a right knee injury to the hugely influential Raffi Quirke, swung the pendulum towards Pat Lam’s Bears and Ravouvou made it count in dramatic fashion with a sweet finish.
It was the sixth successive league game in which the Fijian star has crossed the whitewash and it gave Bristol, inspired by England prop Ellis Genge, their fourth successive Prem win.
Genge completes medal hat-trick
Genge continued his barnstorming season by picking up a Player of the Match medal for the third successive Bristol game.
He did so after waging a fierce battle throughout with England team mate Tom Curry, Sale’s nuggety back-rower and not a man to take a backwards step.
The pair went at it hammer and tong throughout after Genge had demanded his team avenge last season’s 38-0 home humiliation at the hands of these same Sharks.
“We spoke about that before the game and I said to the boys ‘it can’t happen again’,” he said afterwards. “I’m a bit overwhelmed at the physicality, the emotion. The boys were fantastic. All of them could have got this medal.
“I said to them it should be an inherent trait of this club that we are able to knock it about and mix it with the big lumps. It’s got to be part of our DNA.”
Triumph over adversity
Bristol suffered so many injuries in the first weeks of the season it seemed they would struggle to fulfil their fixtures left alone win them.
Yet here we are in the opening week of the New Year with Lam’s team on top of the table after a sixth successive win and fourth straight in the league.
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“The group’s had a lot of adversity,” said Tom Jordan, playing at 10 in place of AJ MacGinty, who ruptured an Achilles in those dark days of autumn when Bears were dropping like flies.
Few back then would have predicted Bristol ending 2025 with an unbeaten home record, fewer still would have taken them to overturn a 10-point deficit here after tries by Tom O’Flaherty and captain Ernst van Rhyn put Sale 17-7 in front.
But Lam’s men lack nothing in character. It might have taken Quirke’s knee injury to free up the space for Matias Moroni to score and put them back in the contest on 55 minutes.
They might also have been fortunate not to have lost Bill Mata to a card as early as the second minute. But that is where the luck ended.
They had to win this hard the way – against a Sale team with the bit between its teeth and without Louis Rees-Zammit, who passed an HIA but stepped out of the contest at half-time as he was not feeling right.
“Sale always play their best rugby against us,” said Lam afterwards. They did that alright, but this time Bristol were up to the challenge.
History repeating itself… well, almost
“I’d love history to repeat itself,” Alex Sanderson said beforehand and the Sale Sharks boss so nearly got his way.
Last season he instructed his team to “cage the Bear”. He fired up a side without an away point in the first half of the campaign to believe they could spring a major shock. Sale responded by winning 38-0.
Until Northampton went to Bath last weekend with an understrength side and hammered the champions, that Sale effort stood unrivalled as the best away performance in the Prem.
It seemed unthinkable they could repeat it against a Bears side fourth in the league and on a five-match winning streak. Warren Spragg, Sharks’ kicking coach, said as much. “It was a freaky performance we had a year ago,” he insisted. “You can’t come here and repeat the same thing again.”
Only, they pretty much did. Inspired by Curry they threw a suffocating blanket over Bristol’s attacking ambition. They were more aggressive, more disruptive and better organised.
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They took the lead on 17 minutes through an O’Flaherty try, made possible by Ma’asi-White weathering a fierce Jordan hit and getting the ball to the edge.
Although Joe Owen struck back for Bristol on the stroke of half-time they took the lead again through skipper Van Rhyn soon after the restart and when George Ford kicked a penalty it seemed Sanderson would again get his wish.
Not this time. Instead, Bristol scored the final 12 points to leave Sharks seventh in the table, a distant 14 points behind their pace-setting conquerors.
Quirke gives England 7-1 bench option
For 55 minutes Quirke ran the show. He started the game at scrum-half but within two minutes moved to the wing to replace Alex Wills, smashed by Mata in an incident.
What might have been as heavy a blow for Sharks as it was for Wills turned into a blessing as Quirke showcased his inner wing. He was a revelation, his pace unsettling Bristol at every turn.
Steve Borthwick, the England head coach, is keen to explore the possibility of a 7-1 bench with just one specialist back covering the positions behind the scrum.
Until Quirke went down lame late on, his audition for that role had gone exceedingly well. Rather like Austin Healey in yesteryear he is equally effective in the back three as he at half-back.
If only he can stay fit – and sadly that has proved beyond the Sale nine too often since his England debut in 2021 – he is a player Borthwick will want to see a lot more of.
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