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Bristol director of rugby Pat Lam defended his decision to rest a host of star names, despite seeing his side lose valuable ground in the race for the play-offs in a 33-19 Gallagher Prem defeat at Leicester.
Lam chose to leave out Ellis Genge, Louis Rees-Zammit and Tom Jordan, while their opponents were near full strength.
As a result Leicester were able to pick up a crucial five points to climb up to third in the table as Bristol came away with nothing and dropped to fifth.
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That was rough justice on the men from the west country, with the game evenly contested until eight points from the home side in the dying stages broke Bristol’s hearts.
Joaquin Moro, Hanro Liebenberg, Izaia Perese and Gabriel Hamer-Webb scored Leicester’s tries, with Billy Searle adding two conversions and three penalties.
Fitz Harding scored two tries for Bristol and Kalaveti Ravouvou the other, with both Sam Worsley and James Williams adding conversions.
Lam said: “It was always going to be the decision to leave the players out and play them next week as it’s tough being in camp for an eight-week period.
“The boys would have probably been happy to play, but we make the decision for them and we preferred to stick with the training group that we’ve had to prepare for this fixture.
“Welford Road is always a tough place to come and you need to savour any victory you have here and you have to earn it by being at your best and we weren’t today.
“I’m disappointed as it was a really good game, but Leicester are in good form and we squandered a lot of opportunities by conceding 18 turnovers.
“Also our discipline wasn’t good enough as we gave away penalties to allow them to take the game away from us.”
Leicester head coach Geoff Parling admitted he was shocked by his team’s decision to continue to play in the final minute, which resulted in their bonus-point try.
He said: “I was screaming for them to kick it out as I didn’t want to give Bristol two losing points, but I’m all for the boys playing what’s in front of them and expressing themselves and they certainly did that.
“It was a great game with both sides playing positively and I’m really proud of the intent and effort and pleased at the way our game is evolving.
“We started strongly but over-played slightly in the middle of the field and were too loose around the edges so I felt we fed Bristol at times.”
