{"id":699852,"date":"2026-01-16T12:22:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T12:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/699852\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T12:22:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T12:22:20","slug":"england-great-singles-out-not-a-household-name-bristol-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/699852\/","title":{"rendered":"England great singles out ‘not a household name’ Bristol player"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former England No.9 Ben Youngs has heaped praise on an unsung Bristol Bears hero ahead of Sunday\u2019s clash with defending champions Union Bordeaux B\u00e8gles in the Investec Champions Cup.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Pat Lam\u2019s PREM Rugby<\/a> side are hosting the Top 14 club at Ashton Gate, and while both are already qualified from Pool 4 for next April\u2019s Round of 16, they are battling with Northampton Saints<\/a> to decide which two of the three clubs will have home advantage in that first knockout round. <\/p>\n

The Bears and UBB have provided excellent entertainment over the European winter, respectively scoring 21 and 23 tries in their three Champions Cup<\/a> matches so far. This potent attack has left Youngs, the England men\u2019s record caps holder, looking forward to a head-to-head between the two unbeaten sides.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to watch great rugby, then tune in to watch Bristol,\u201d insisted Youngs, the For The Love Of Rugby<\/a> co-host who retired from playing after last June\u2019s Premiership final loss with Leicester Tigers<\/a> against Bath. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Absolute masterclass<\/p>\n

\u201cLast Saturday\u2019s game in Pretoria was almost bonkers. Pat Lam\u2019s side entertained with their ball control, how they found space and structured their play.<\/p>\n

\u201cBristol put in an absolute masterclass to beat the Vodacom Bulls, but they are going to need it again at home to UBB on Sunday. The defending champions certainly flexed their muscles and showed what they are about when beating Northampton.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be very entertaining. Can Bristol play with their pace and style against a very physical, well-oiled Bordeaux machine that also has absolute out-and-out finishers and plays great rugby? <\/p>\n

\u201cBordeaux are the team to beat in this season\u2019s tournament and I see them getting this latest job done at Ashton Gate, but what I do suspect from Bristol is scoring four or more tries and getting a bonus point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Loose Pass: Time to penalise \u2018unsporting\u2019 behaviour while Toulouse fall foul of Stoke analogy again<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Who\u2019s hot and who\u2019s not: Ronan O\u2019Gara a \u2018no-show\u2019 after Leinster loss and a \u2018memorable weekend\u2019 for Scottish clubs in Champions Cup<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Names such as Wales winger Louis Rees-Zammit have caught the eye this season at Bristol, but Youngs singled out a lesser-known talent in his latest Planet Rugby column<\/a> for the impact he has made in the forwards. \u201cOne of their players fans may not know too much about is Joe Batley,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at what he does, his skill set at lock, his work ethic, he is not a household name, but he gets through a bucket load of work and is great in those wide channels. I really enjoy watching Batley go about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

A household name, Youngs praised going into Sunday\u2019s game was England prop Ellis Genge. \u201cI recently said that Ellis Genge<\/a> is the most in-form player in the world right now. You can\u2019t underestimate what props have to do in terms of the work. It\u2019s scrum, maul, hit rucks, make tackles, but when you add all that with what he is actually doing with the offensive part of the game in terms of his carry, he has been terrific.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know he is a good carrier for Bristol Bears, but the England prop seems to be even more disruptive than we have ever seen. His involvements and the quality of each involvement, especially last Saturday in Pretoria, are just absolutely brilliant. I just feel like he is in great form at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

England latest: Winners and losers as \u2018hard to ignore\u2019 winger yet again pushes case while eligibility rule costs \u2018Brothers of Destruction\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Springboks star will be \u2018hugely missed\u2019 as PREM outfit confirm \u2018invaluable\u2019 signing<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Playing at Ashton Gate will be a very different situation for Bordeaux, whose home support last weekend in France looked to intimidate Henry Pollock, the Northampton back-rower.<\/p>\n

Their dislike of the youngster stemmed from last May\u2019s Champions Cup final in Cardiff, where a post-game altercation resulted in prop Jefferson Poirot getting slapped with a two-game ban<\/a> following an incident with Pollock. <\/p>\n

The English youngster, though, wasn\u2019t in the slightest bit perturbed by the reception he received in Bordeaux, and while his team were beaten 50-28, he scored two tries and did his pulse check celebration.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHenry Pollock played the pantomime villain very, very well at UBB last Sunday and backed it up by performing very, very well,\u201d reckoned Youngs. \u201cIt seems that the young Northampton Saints back-rower thrives in that type of environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe French crowd was hostile, getting into him and booing him, and then when he scored, he gave it the pulse check celebration. I loved it. I thought he was exactly what we wanted him to be when we previewed the match last week, which was getting into everything. The Bordeaux fans booed, hissed and did all that but it was all tongue in cheek.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t see this type of hostility often in rugby, but the most pleasing thing was that while some players would have shrunken in that situation and gone into their shells, Pollock was anything but. He produced the goods.\u201d<\/p>\n

Investec Champions Cup<\/a> \u2013 The greatest club rugby competition in the world. Proudly sponsored by\u00a0Investec<\/a>, leading International Bank and Wealth Manager.\u00a0<\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0Finn Russell\u2019s theory for Top 14 teams\u2019 struggles in Investec Champions Cup as Bath\u2019s \u2018great addition\u2019 hailed<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former England No.9 Ben Youngs has heaped praise on an unsung Bristol Bears hero ahead of Sunday\u2019s clash…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[6163,381,748,2383,393,4884,225,191668,12,10327,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-699852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-ben-youngs","9":"tag-bristol","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-champions-cup","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-home-page","15":"tag-investec-champions-cup","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-northampton-saints","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115904757386211970","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}