Wood clears Quins' way

Bristol 24 Harlequins 35

NINE more tries, another 59 points. English rugby's impersonation of the southern hemisphere's Super 12 series continued at a frenzied pace at the Memorial Ground yesterday but any similarity with the feasts laid on by Auckland and Natal during the summer was purely cosmetic.

The Courage League elite may be scoring more heavily than ever before, but they are also making more mistakes. There were hundreds of them from both sides at Bristol - dropped passes galore and wrong options by the cartload. It may have been a comedy of errors but Jack Rowell, the watching England manager, must have struggled to see the joke.

Bristol started the game in such disarray that the visitors must have fancied their chances of another lucrative afternoon at the cricket-score school of winning rugby. The West Countrymen were without their most gifted attacking runner, Paul Hull, and both first-choice props. Those who did make it to the party were hardly in the pink; Simon Shaw, the England squad lock, looked more like an Egyptian mummy than a second row while his partner Phil Adams was forced to tread on eggshells rather than opponents' heads following his crimes and misdemeanours at Northampton last weekend.

To their credit, Bristol dug so deep that they finished the match somewhere near the earth's core. No one worked harder than Andy Collins, fresh out of the under-21 side. A senior debut against a front row of Quins' all- international stature was rather like going on a first pub crawl with Oliver Reed for company, but the 17-stone rookie prop flatly refused to buckle. He even helped set up a 48th-minute try by the outstanding Bristol captain Martin Corry - Rowell now has acquired another addition to the England back-row log jam - but by that time, the home side were just beginning to struggle for air.

Tony Spreadbury's decision to award Quins a penalty try on the stroke of half-time did more than anything to break them. Ever since Bath won last season's Pilkington Cup in similar fashion, what was once a rarity has fast become an epidemic and as the visitors pitched camp on the Bristol line it was possible to hear the referee's mind ticking over long before he whistled.

That score gave Quins an interval lead they scarcely deserved and within six minutes of the restart they capitalised on their good fortune to make sure of the points. For the second week running Keith Wood, their hyperactive Irish hooker, motored over from fully 20 metres, this time leaving Robert Jones and his opposite number Mark Regan in his slipstream. It was the only tackle Regan missed all afternoon but the look on his face confirmed that it was the one he had most wanted to make.

Corry, as magnificently athletic as he was aggressive, gave his side some sort of hope with his second-half try but it was momentary at best. The Quins' back division, infinitely more dynamic as well as five yards quicker, were slowly finding some cohesion and when Gary Connolly found the rub of the green with a deflected grubber kick, Daren O'Leary pounced in the corner to smother any potential fightback. Connolly underlined the victory with a glorious try of his own nine minutes from time, created by Mike Corcoran with help from the strong-running Rory Jenkins.

Bristol, who had started with a flourish and claimed early tries through the Irish flanker David Corkery and home-grown wing Ben Breeze, could feel slightly hard done by. Shaw's last-minute score, comically handed him on a plate by Paul Challinor, was little recompense for 80 minutes of ultimately fruitless effort.

Bristol: D Bennett; D Tiueti, F Waters, M Denney, B Breeze; P Burke (M Tainton, 52min), R Jones; A Collins, M Regan, D Hinkins, S Shaw, P Adams, M Corry, E Rollitt, D Corkery.

Harlequins: J Staples; D O'Leary, G Connolly, W Carling, M Corcoran; P Challinor, H Harries; J Leonard, K Wood, L Benezech, Glyn Llewellyn, Gareth Llewellyn, R Jenkins (I Pickup, 78min), B Davison, L Cabannes.

Referee: A Spreadbury (Somerset).