The chill wind of relegation blew once again across Bristol as a narrow defeat to London Irish returned us well-and-truly to the relegation zone. London Irish, in contrast move to third in the Premiership.

Bristol elected to play the first half with the wind and were able to turn the early territorial dominance into a 6-nil lead after just 13 minutes with two Jason Strange penalties resulting from Irish misdemeanours at the breakdown. The wind did not appear to be having too much of an influence on the game, until Strange managed to kick a penalty dead from inside the Bristol half handing the advantage back to Irish. They stayed on the attack and powerful driving from their forwards saw Leguizamon held out close to the Bristol line, only for the Irish hooker David Paice to drive over near the posts. Riki Flutey converted to give make the score 6 – 7 after 24 minutes. Just five minutes later, though, Paice was to transgress at a ruck and be sin-binned. There had been a number of offences previously, and several more after, so the referee had little option but to issue the yellow card (and he might have used it again, frankly).

Almost immediately, from the line-out following Strange’s kick to the corner the Bristol forwards drove powerfully to the Irish line and Mark Regan went over for the try. The difficult conversion was well taken by Strange to put Bristol back into the lead, 13 – 7.

Unfortunately, Bristol were unable to take any further advantage from the extra man, and Jason Strange was well wide with an attempted drop-goal. How come we have the only Welsh fly-half who can’t kick drop-goals? It would certainly have been useful later in the match.

In the second half Bristol were playing into the wind, but we have certainly known it to be stronger in the past, so perhaps it would not be a significant factor. Sadly this was not to be the case, as was shown by the two pigeons asleep in the Irish half for much of the remainder of the match!

Irish went ahead six minutes in to the half after Vaughan Going first elected to take a ball that looked set to cross the line for a 22 drop-out and then kicked carelessly, failed to make any distance or touch, and enabled Irish to run at a disorganised Bristol defence with Flutey going over and then converting to make it 13 – 14 to the visiting side. Bristol attempted to strike back, despite some poor tactical kicking, but Strange’s penalty from yet another Irish offside faded well away from the posts. The force of the wind was with the Irish now and astute kicking from half-backs and centres kept Bristol pinned well into their own half for the best part of 20 minutes, unable to break the stranglehold Irish now had on the game. In particular our defensive kicking was woeful, with a failure to make any distance or simply handing possession back to the Irish. The Bristol tackling, after some earlier lapses looked pretty solid, but finally the Irish pressure told as they run back another misdirected clearance with Gonzalo Tiesi going over through some weak tackles to score a try converted by Flutey, 13 – 21 to Irish.

Bristol now reacted bravely with a series of forward drives. From a lineout a backs and forwards combined to take the ball close to the Irish line. At one point it looked to me that Brian Lima was taken out both high and with a forearm as he went for the line, but eventually it was the excellent Geraint Lewis who managed to make his way through the defence to score a try that spoke highly of Bristol ’s collective spirit. Strange struck the conversion to take Bristol back into losing bonus point territory at 20 -21. Sadly for Bristol , in the little time remaining they were unable to conjure another scoring opportunity.

Another narrow loss for Bristol that ensures we remain more involved in the relegation fight than we would like, particularly with other sides winning over the weekend (what happened to Sale ?). The forward effort was excellent, as we have come to expect, although by the end there were certainly signs of weariness amongst the veterans. My concerns about our tactical kicking were reinforced, with our inability to clear the Irish pressure for long periods in the second half particularly worrying. If Irish are the form team in the Premiership though we can look forward with some confidence to our next few matches.