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On paper Bristol’s Big Day Out concept in Cardiff was a decent one. From the Bears’ perspective it offered a chance to attract a few more floating voters and show them a good time in one of the world’s great stadiums. For the Prem as a whole it also massages the league’s aggregate attendance figures and projects the sense of a tournament growing steadily bigger and better.

For the satisfaction index to hit the necessary heights, however, the most basic part of the equation has to be fulfilled. Unfortunately for the Bears’ marketeers this contest did absolutely nothing for Bristolian blood pressure as they contrived to lose to a Harlequins side previously without a win in six matches and suffer a serious dent to their playoff prospects.

Quins, though, fully deserved this morale-boosting win, effectively sealed by a 58th-minute try from their Argentine winger Rodrigo Isgró. The Londoners have had a dire season but this week’s announcement of a reshuffled coaching staff for next season seemed to encourage them to draw a line in the sand. Their defensive performance was certainly full of guts and never allowed the Bears to get into their stride.

It leaves Bristol in fifth place, seven points off the playoff positions, and this was the worst possible moment for them to lose momentum. Their captain, Fitz Harding, was as tireless as ever and, for a long time, his seventh-minute try kept his team’s noses in front. Steven Luatua also kept going to the end, grabbing a late consolation try, but Jamie Benson’s last-minute penalty sealed a relieving Quins win.

For Bristol it could be very costly, particularly in a week when they announced a pre-tax annual loss of £5.6m despite a slightly increased turnover of £11.1m. This was very much a day when they needed to make the on-field numbers add up with Leicester and Exeter having both delivered bonus-point wins to cement their current places in the top four.

The nagging uncertainly was the degree to which Quins would rebound following their below-par home defeat to Gloucester. This was a test of character they could ill afford to fail, even with Marcus Smith absent on a Caribbean break and a spiralling injury list. In the event they passed it spectacularly.

It had not seemed terribly likely initially when a lack of first-half ball made their task tougher still but Alex Dombrandt, for one, refused to let that dissuade him. Having been denied an earlier try when Harding was impeded at a defensive ruck the No 8 was finally rewarded from similarly close-range after 22 minutes to propel his side on to the scoreboard.

In a stop-start game, too, Bristol can be made to look more mortal than if their talented backs are fizzing the ball from side to side. While they posed an occasional threat through Louis Rees-Zammit, the Welsh international could never quite escape his pursuers. In the end his mixed performance at full-back was not the antidote he might have hoped to a Six Nations campaign that delivered only one Welsh win in five attempts.

George Skivington was angry with parts of his Gloucester side’s performance after seeing them comfortably beaten 36-17 by in-form Leicester at Villa Park. It was Gloucester’s first visit to the Premier League football ground but they blew any chance of making it a fruitful one by conceding 22 points in the opening 16 minutes and were never able to recover. They did show some spirit to score three times as Leicester became careless and disjointed with the Slater Cup already safely in the bag.

Jamie Blamire, with two, Will Wand, Gabriel Hamer-Webb, Orlando Bailey and Harry Wells were Leicester’s try-scorers, with Billy Searle adding two conversions and James O’Connor one. Matias Alemanno, Will Joseph and Dian Bleuler scored Gloucester’s tries, one of which Charlie Atkinson converted.

Skivington said: “I’m trying to calm down but if I was picking a team now for next week, there would certainly be some changes in it. It was a disastrous first 20 minutes with a couple of key moments whereby individual players chose not to be more challenging in the tackle. There was also an issue at scrum time."

The Slater Cup is played for between the two clubs in honour of their former player Ed Slater (pictured with Ollie Chessum), who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2022.

The Exeter forwards coach Ross McMillan said his side executed their gameplan very well in Friday's 38-14 win at Newcastle. In a ruthless opening 25 minutes  at at Kingston Park Paul Brown-Bampoe scored twice either side of Campbell Ridl’s effort before Olly Woodburn bagged the bonus point. Ridl scored his second try before the break and Stephen Varney struck immediately after the restart.

McMillan said: “Especially in games that start the way that they did, you have ebbs and flows in the game and it’s hard to maintain that. It’s probably an area we want to make sure we get right again if we get the opportunity to do that. The start of the game looked exactly how we wanted it to go. Fair play to our players, they executed the plan very well.”

Newcastle's head coach, Stephen Jones, was disappointed by the start but hoped his side could see it as a lesson. “We’ve got some really good learnings as a group tonight. We’re blooding some young players,” he said. “Our group will be better for this experience. From a coaching perspective I’ll be better for it as well. I know some areas we can push, especially for next week.” PA Media

At least hiring out their stadium will earn the cash-strapped Welsh Rugby Union a few extra quid but inviting the Prem tanks on to their covered lawn is always a calculated risk. In an ideal world plenty of locals would love an annual brace of Anglo-Welsh big games between Cardiff and the Bears instead of watching their teams disappear off to South Africa to play opponents with whom they have no historical beef let alone geographical rivalry.

Instead the Welsh sides find themselves with their noses pressed to the Prem windows, even if this was not necessarily an advert for the superiority of the rival product. The last half hour was at least edgier, particularly after Jarrod Evans had put his side ahead 8-7 with a simple 51st-minute penalty for not releasing in the tackle.

Surely Bristol could not become Quins’ first away victims of a desperately disappointing season? The longer the game lasted, though, the more the visitors’ confidence began to grow and they fully deserved their second try, Isgró leaving his station on the right wing to arc around the midfield defence and score near the posts to reward a purposeful period of pressure. When the Bears were plotting their big day out this major jolt was absolutely not part of their plans.