The 20-5 success – a result which ended a run of four head-to-head defeats without a single bonus point – moved the Reds above Premiership dropouts London Welsh in the Greene King IPA Championship table as the first British & Irish Cup break arrives. So, following an agonising two-point defeat at home to Nottingham a fortnight ago, the Islanders appear to be back on track.
| P | W | D | L | BP | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bristol | 9 | 7 | 0 | 2 | 6 | 34 |
| Yorkshire Carnegie | 9 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 9 | 33 |
| Doncaster | 9 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 7 | 31 |
| Bedford | 9 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 5 | 29 |
| Rotherham | 9 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 26 |
| Nottingham | 9 | 4 | 0 | 5 | 7 | 23 |
| London Scottish | 9 | 4 | 0 | 5 | 4 | 20 |
| Jersey | 9 | 4 | 0 | 5 | 4 | 20 |
| London Welsh | 9 | 4 | 0 | 5 | 3 | 19 |
| Moseley | 9 | 3 | 0 | 6 | 4 | 16 |
| Ealing | 9 | 2 | 0 | 7 | 5 | 13 |
| Cornish Pirates | 9 | 2 | 0 | 7 | 3 | 11 |
‘I wouldn’t say it was our best performance of the season, but it was the best discipline I’ve seen in sticking to our game plan,’ said Boden.
‘There is a lot of stuff we’ll look at, but the boys stuck to the task that we put together, and that’s key … everyone was on the same message, whereas sometimes this season we’ve gone off task a bit.
‘We knew we could put them under pressure in the set piece and we also knew our kicking game would be crucial, and we performed them both quite well.’
The former Jersey hooker, who gave praise to the ‘outstanding’ second row Dave McKern, continued: ‘The defence was pretty solid … in our last performance at home we didn’t do ourselves justice; it wasn’t a horrendous performance but it wasn’t at the standards we set ourselves. A few of the players were one or two per cent missing against Nottingham, but they put that back in to win the game today.
‘It’s a good result away from home, but we can’t get carried away. It’s a tough league and we can’t start thinking about going on a run of eight games unbeaten.’
‘It wasn’t perfect, but whenever you’re working as hard as that you can’t ask for more.’
‘We know when it’s a forwards game we’ve got the tools to do it … there were a few little hiccups but overall we were dominant, so come Monday when we’re having our review we won’t get shouted at, which is always good.’
