Contepomi helps Thorburn make up for Cup clanger

Bristol 18 Sale 6

There is only one thing to do when you have just been humiliated in front of your home supporters, your employer is questioning your judgement and the local press is full of bile: send for the first team.

Peter Thorburn, the Bristol coach, did precisely that yesterday, restoring six full internationals to his starting combination and handing Sale a fourth straight defeat spread over three different tournaments. Who knows? He may even get a pat on the back from the man who pays his wages.

The only physical contact between Thorburn and the increasingly frazzled Bristol owner, Malcolm Pearce, following last weekend's Powergen Cup catastrophe against Rotherham was of the backside-kicking variety.

Pearce rather fancied a decent Cup run, which might have boosted the coffers by £250,000, but Thorburn felt his big-time players needed a breather and selected what was effectively a shadow side. Bristol came up short, Pearce blew a gasket, Thorburn apologised in public. An interesting few days? You could say.

Under the circumstances, Bristol badly needed to put on a show against the Premiership's second-placed side, and in their own one-paced, hairy-chested way, they delivered.

Alex Brown and Garath Archer, a good cop-nasty cop partnership in the second row, revelled in the river-bed conditions and kept Sale's lighter, faster forwards under lock and key. The scrummage was barely a contest, the exchanges at the breakdown equally one-sided. As a result, Felipe Contepomi had the time and space to shape the game to Bristol's liking.

Contepomi is some player on his day, and this was one of them. The Argentinian stand-off landed six penalties from six attempts – he is now seventh in Bristol's all-time scoring list – but there was more to his kicking game than half-a-dozen quality shots at goal. The high balls he put up were bang on the button, his crafty little grubbers were miniature works of art. If his colleagues did not possess the wit to capitalise, it was hardly his fault.

In fairness to the home side, they would have reaped greater benefit from their superiority at the set-piece had the referee, Roy Maybank, shown the faintest understanding of what was going on in there. Julian White, the best tight-head scrummager in the Premiership, gave poor Kevin Yates some serious grief, but his expertise was entirely lost on Maybank.

Andrew Sheridan also caught the eye, in all phases of the game. There are aspects of loose-head technique that still baffle the former second row, but once he masters the basics, he will be a hot contender for representative honours.

A three-point lead at the interval was scant reward for Bristol, who monopolised possession throughout the first 40, and they had their scary moments either side of the hour mark when Graeme Bond and the supremely competitive Bryan Redpath started cooking up trouble.

Redpath managed one clean break into the danger zone and found Alex Sanderson on his shoulder, but the England flanker passed directly to Brendon Daniel rather than to one of his own kind, and the clearest try-scoring opportunity of the game went to waste.

Sale never threatened again. Two Contepomi penalties in the last five minutes took Bristol out of sight, and the Bristol hierarchy retreated to the bar in rather better humour than they had seven days previously.

Bristol: Penalties Contepomi 6. Sale: Penalties Hodgson 2.

Bristol: L Best; B Daniel, A Higgins, D Gibson, P Christophers; F Contepomi, A Pichot (P Richards, 82); A Sheridan, P Johnstone, J White, G Archer (capt), A Brown, M Salter, R Oakley, R Beattie.

Sale: J Robinson; M Cueto, D Harris (V Going, 70), G Bond, S Hanley; C Hodgson, B Redpath (capt); K Yates (J Thorp, 58), C Marais, B Stewart (S Turner, 58), C Jones, I Fullarton, A Sanderson, S Pinkerton, P Anglesea.

Referee: R Maybank (Kent).