Semi Radradra treated like he never has been before on a rugby pitch
These are worrying times for the Bristol Bears at the moment. Not only are they sitting at the foot of the Gallagher Premiership table, but they saw their best player go flying on Sunday against London Irish.
The moral of the story is ‘do not go high on a 6 ft 4 in, 120 kg loose forward,’ and Radradra found out the hard way at the GTech Community Stadium. As the Fijian still searches for his best form after a long term knee injury, he was sent flying by Irish’s 19-year-old Chandler Cunningham-South in scenes that have maybe never been seen before on a rugby pitch. It was a tackle that more or less summed up Bristol’s performance, as they lost 23-7.
Take a look at the tackle:
Despite this tackle, Radradra actually had a decent game against the Exiles, proving to be a menace with ball in hand all match. Here are the highlights of his game:
Bristol director of rugby Pat Lam rued the lack of ball his side had during the match. He said: “The table doesn’t lie and it’s not ideal to be where we are now from where we once were.
“We are living on scraps as we had 30 per cent territory and 30 per cent possession and if we flip those figures around, what could we do with that amount of ball?
“We had one attack in the first half, which we scored from, and just one more in the second half as the rest of the time we spent defending.
“There was a 19-7 penalty count against us and penalties conceded in tough conditions is a double whammy as it’s so hard to retrieve the territory lost.
“We couldn’t get any foothold in the match as ill-discipline made it extremely difficult for us and there’s huge frustration in the changing rooms as it’s killing us.”
Bristol lock Joe Batley said: “We didn’t make it easy for ourselves as we gave away too many penalties.
“We couldn’t seem to string any phases together and Irish were very clinical by taking the points on offer.”
