Newcastle regret giving 'fantastic athlete' so much time

Bristol head coach Pat Lam praised the commitment and spirit shown by former club Newcastle after seeing his current side overturn a 10-point deficit to seal a 36-27 victory at Ashton Gate.

The Bears looked in serious trouble when they trailed 27-17 early in the second half, but the introduction of Ellis Genge and the ability of Louis Rees-Zammit inspired a fightback as Bristol also overcame a red card for Joe Batley and a yellow for Kaleti Ravouvou in the dying stages.

“Well done to my former club as they made it extremely difficult as they certainly took the game to us,” Lam said.

“With a six-day turnaround we had to shuffle the pack so we had a slow start and lacked cohesion but ended up with the right outcome.

“We were on the wrong side of the penalty count and I thought both cards were somewhat harsh. Joe (Batley)’s could have been a yellow and Kaleti (Ravouvou)’s offence could have just been a penalty.

“Still I’m pleased that we’ve now won five on the trot as normally the period of November to January sees us lose more than we win.”

Bristol scored six tries in total, including two from Rees-Zammit, with Matias Moroni, Gabriel Oghre, Noah Heward and Ravouvou also on the score sheet. Tom Jordan added two conversions and James Williams one.

Newcastle secured their first league point of the season with four tries of their own. Oli Spencer crossed twice, Murray McCallum and Ollie Leatherbarrow adding the others, with Brett Connon kicking a penalty and two conversions.

Newcastle’s head coach Alan Dickens felt it was a missed opportunity for Newcastle.

“Every game we go into we want to win and we were close today,” he said.

“If we had scored a try near the end against 13 men, then the opportunity was there for us to win it but we couldn’t take it.

“I try to take positives from every game. We addressed momentum in training this week as we had momentum against Bath last week but lost it.

“When we scored the fourth try early in the second half, we definitely had momentum but Bristol then had a purple patch to take it away from us.

“However their ill-discipline with their red card gave us a chance to have possession and territory but although we came close, we couldn’t make it count.

“We sent the message out at half-time not to give Rees-Zammit so much time as he is a fantastic athlete and a very dangerous player.”