It is still early days but the new consortium in charge of Worcester could not have wished for a more auspicious start. Play like this consistently and the Warriors, far from being relegation candidates, will be a top six team with the capacity to unsettle anyone. Already they sit in seventh place, courtesy of a club record Premiership victory, with confidence growing by the week.
To say Bristol finished the M5 derby stuck on the hard shoulder with smoke pouring from their engine would be only a slight exaggeration. The visitors shipped seven tries and endured comfortably their worst 80 minutes since their Premiership return. They were alarmingly flat and pedestrian and need to re-energise some of their senior citizens before the resumption of the domestic league campaign in six weeks’ time.
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By contrast Worcester were super-charged, not least in the back row where their captain, GJ van Velze, was quite outstanding while his lieutenants Marco Mama and Sam Lewis both outshone their more illustrious opposite numbers. With Nick Schonert and Jack Singleton also giving Eddie Jones a gentle nudge ahead of England’s autumn internationals next month, the joie de vivre that has distinguished Bristol’s season to date was conspicuously absent.
Supplying the game’s opening try after just four minutes through a charging Yann Thomas was as good as it got for the hangdog Bears. As against Leicester at Welford Road a fortnight ago, the Warriors looked threatening every time they moved the ball in the opening half, with Ryan Mills, Bryce Heem, Josh Adams and Chris Pennell all looking sharp and purposeful throughout.
From the moment Van Velze bumped off Alapati Leiua to score in the right corner, Bristol’s defence proved horribly porous. The Warriors had already had two other potential scores disallowed before the excellent Mills skipped through another sizeable gap and Mama then eluded four Bristol tacklers to register a third within eight minutes. Even before Francois Venter intercepted a looping pass from John Afoa to race 70 metres and secured a try bonus point before half-time, a first home win of the season for Worcester was already nailed on.
Pennell and Adams, via another interception, turned the screw further shortly after the resumption, prompting Bristol’s director of rugby, Pat Lam, to make a raft of changes. The cavalry could not prevent Heem nipping over late on – Duncan Weir’s seventh successful conversion sealing Warriors’ biggest win since a 51-10 win over Newcastle a decade ago.
The only downside was a 69th-minute red card shown to the replacement Ryan Bower who caught the head of Bristol’s Will Hurrell with his forearm as he went to clear out a ruck. The loosehead prop can expect a ban but Worcester’s director of rugby, Alan Solomons, is hopeful of welcoming back his England centre Ben Te’o – yet to play this season – against the Ospreys on Saturday week should he not feature off the bench against Stade Français in Paris next weekend.
Bristol, for their part, are looking forward to their All Black full-back Charles Piutau returning within the next month as they seek to regroup having conceded 97 points in their last two games. Lam admitted there was a sense of “embarrassment” in the away dressing room and, for all their early-season enterprise, the Bears will resume their league programme against Exeter Chiefs next month in 10th place, just three points off the bottom. “We’re disappointed for our supporters,” acknowledged Lam. “They expect better than that. It’s a tough day but you’ve just got to take your medicine, learn from it and move on.”
Worcester’s fans, meanwhile, will be looking forward to hearing more from their new owners, who declined requests to speak to the media on Sunday at precisely the moment they might have been expected to coo into every microphone. The group, which includes Jed McCrory, a former chairman of Swindon Town FC, and principal backer Errol Pope, indicated in the match programme they believe they can turn around the club’s financial fortunes and make it “self-sustainable” whilst continuing to give the playing department the requisite support. “It’s marvellous to have it settled,” Solomons said. “They seem like good guys and they want to support the club going forward.”