Evans left disappointed

Bristol 43 Harlequins 27

They may be entrenched at the foot of the Zurich Premiership, but yesterday Harlequins played as if there was no such thing as relegation, more like a side without a care in the world.

The only pain visible after their six-try stuffing at the hands of Bristol was that etched on the face of Mark Evans, their chief executive and head coach, who felt that his team played too fast and loose for a side in deep trouble.

"I am upset and disappointed," said Evans, for whom not even the acquisition of a point for picking up four tries merited a smile. "We seemed to lose our way. I just felt we played too loose against a side that was in a similar position to ourselves." Towards the end Quins even conceded two tries after Bristol had been reduced to 14 men.

Bristol were not that brilliant, not consistently so anyway. Having established a 14-point lead towards half-time, they then allowed the Londoners back into the game, conceding tries either side of the interval.

Fortunately for them Quins then lost Steve White-Cooper temporarily after he up-ended Garath Archer at a line-out and Bristol's gargantuan Andy Sheraton took advantage to bulldoze over.

After Andrew Higgins had muscled his way through some feeble defences for the valuable fourth try, which earned Bristol a bonus point, it was all over.

But although they had it won Bristol did not let up. And not even the loss of Emiliano Bergamaschi for persistent infringing could stop them. Indeed they rather made monkeys out of Harlequins by scoring those two tries while the replacement prop was in the sin bin. True, because they had no specialist prop to call on the scrums had to be uncontested, but that worked in their favour providing them with clean first-phase possession.

Lee Best, the replacement full-back, came into the line and comfortably outstripped everyone, then Phil Christophers, who had opened the scoring with a well-worked try in the ninth minute, scored the try of the match to round off the rout, the England A centre scorching into space, before stepping off his left foot and to bag the final try.

There were other heroes. The Bristol forwards set off like men possessed, prop Paul Johnstone was in awesome form, doing his stuff at the set piece, but then mixing it around the fringes and tackling his heart out in defence. The Argentinian fly-half Felipe Contepomi contributed 13 points with the boot as well as scoring Bristol's second try and Agustin Pichot had a satisfactory return after a seven-week lay-off.

Bristol: Tries Christophers 2, Contepomi, Sheridan, Higgins, Best; Conversions Contepomi 5; Penalty Contepomi. Harlequins: Tries Greenstock 2, Wood, penalty try; Conversions Burke 2; Penalty Burke.

Bristol: J Williams (L Best, 47); D Rees, A Higgins, J Little (capt; S Drahm, 76), P Christophers; F Contepomi, A Pichot; P Johnstone (E Bergamaschi, h-t), N McCarthy (S Nelson, 63), J White, G Archer, A Brown, A Sheridan (C Short, 68), B Sturnham, M Lipman (C Morgan, 78).

Harlequins: B Gollings; R Jewell, W Greenwood, N Greenstock, D Luger; P Burke, N Duncombe (M Powell, 63); J Leonard (B Starr, 75), K Wood (capt), A Olver, A Codling, S White-Cooper (G Morgan, 64), R Winters, T Diprose, A Tiatia (L Sherriff, 69).

Referee: A Spreadbury (Bath).