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Bristol open new season with impressive home win over lethargic Leicester

By PA
Press Association

Man of the match Gabriel Ibitoye scored two tries as Bristol opened the Gallagher Premiership season in style with an impressive 25-14 win over lethargic Leicester at Ashton Gate.

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The Tigers seemed half asleep as the Bears’ wing scored twice in the first half hour as the hosts built up an unassailable 25-0 lead from which the visitors could not recover.

Harry Thacker was also on the try-scoring sheet for Bristol with AJ MacGinty adding two conversions. James Williams added two penalties.

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Dan Kelly and Hanro Liebenberg crossed for Leicester, with Charlie Atkinson and Jamie Shillcock each adding a conversion.

Bristol made an explosive start, taking the lead in the second minute. A misdirected kick from Leicester scrum-half Joe Powell gave the hosts an attacking line-out from where they capitalised when Ibitoye raced onto a well-judged kick from Rich Lane to score.

MacGinty missed with the touchline conversion as did Atkinson with a 45-metre penalty attempt, so Ibitoye’s try was the only score of the opening quarter in which the home side looked the sharper as Leicester continued to make elementary mistakes.

From one of these handling errors, Ibitoye seized on the loose ball to kick it 60 metres and then win a line-out five metres from the opposition line. From there, Bears produced an unstoppable drive which culminated in a try for Thacker.

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Straight from the kick-off, Bristol scored again. The irrepressible Ibitoye was sent on a weaving 35-metre run which ended with him just holding off the attentions of Cameron Henderson to grab the touchdown. MacGinty converted both and shell-shocked Tigers were 19-0 down.

However MacGinty was soon forced to leave the field with a leg problem, soon to be followed by prop Jay Tyack, who suffered a serious looking arm injury.

These setbacks did not deter the home side, who extended their lead with a Williams’ penalty to leave toothless Tigers 22 points adrift at the interval.

Three minutes after the restart the lead was extended when Williams kicked another penalty, before Leicester made a couple of changes in an attempt to reverse their fortunes.

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It paid immediate dividends when one of the replacements, former Bristol man Tom Whiteley, chipped ahead and when the home defence dithered Kelly took advantage to steal possession and score.

Bristol brought on former captain Stephen Luatua and new signing Virimi Vakatawa, the French international centre, but it was the visitors who collected the only points of the final quarter when a well-timed pass from Whiteley sent Liebenberg over.

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Tom 23 minutes ago
English rugby pundits and fans really need to get a grip

However I think the “if their opponents had scored more points then England would have lost” retrospective is pointless at best and silly at worst.

I completely understand your view on this but England were the worst team in both games and if we're letting the result detract from the evaluation of the performance then we're doing ourselves a disservice. England fans should not get excited because we scraped two fortunate wins, it was a swing in variance and long term that variance will come crashing down on England because they did not play well. Ifs and buts aside I don't think anyone thinks England are better than either France or Scotland. The performance is what matters, results follow performances in the long run.


You could for sure argue that the games they lost they could have won if the bounce of a ball went differently. In none of those narrow loses did England feel considerably the better team and there weren't moments you'd chalk up to massive amounts of fortune. In the two narrow loses they very much felt like the worst team and there were many moments where the rub of the green went England's way. Ultimately, they've had an uptick in variance which will average itself out to more losses because they're not good. These two results don't mean anything has been fixed. As I say, performances are what I'm looking for, not results, the results come if the performances are good and right now the performance in every game has more or less been dire.

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R
RedWarriors 45 minutes ago
France change two for Ireland but stick with 7-1 bench tactic

I saw Ben Kayser saying the French players would be livid and motivated due to the Ringrose ban etc. Galthie and Ntamack know the exact reason why the bans differ and one must assume the French squad does also. Galthie is playing silly buggers.


As the red card for Ringrose fell right before a fallow week, he WAS released by Leinster who provided accompanying substantiation. Precedent shows club matches are included in bans in such cases. For Galthie/France alone precedents are Atonio (2023), Haouas (2023), and Danty (2024). Club matches counted for bans.


Ntamack was different because France were due to play a match the following week (versus England). Therefore Galthie COULD NOT release Ntamack. In the written decision, Galthie tried to argue that Ntamack would be released after England but had to admit that a lot depended on outcome of England match which was unknowable. On top of that Ntamack was the starting outhalf for France.

The precedents for the Ntamack situation are O’Mahony (2021) where club games did not count, and Willemse (2024) where Willemse had a 10 match ban reduced to 4 and club matches DID count for the suspension.


So Galthie has had three cases like Ringrose (Atonio, Haouas, Danty) with same outcome as Ringrose. He had one previous case like Ntamack where he succeeded, but he was aware of and even mentioned the O’Mahony case where all the ban was for International matches.


In a nutshell. Why were those players allowed club matches to count? Because they WERE released for the club games.

Why did club matches not count for O’Mahony and Ntamack? Because they WERE NOT released for the club games which meant they could not reach the evidential threshold required.


Why is he demanding a World Rugby inquiry when he knows the reasons for such decisions, has known for years, has benefitted for years? France know this and Ireland knows this.

Dupont and the French team are honorable. This wont sit well with them. I would argue this is a bigger motivator for Ireland than for France.

31 Go to comments
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