Bristol Rugby

I was very sorry to hear that, once again, Bristol Rugby have failed to reach the Premiership. Good luck to Worcester and all that, but it is surely a mockery of the system that the team that “won” the league had then to go into a play off tournament? Aren’t the play offs for the teams that come below the top? Rugby Union might as well scrap the entire season and just have the play offs. It would make far more sense.

There are obviously a lot of Bristol Rovers fans who are pleased that a team owned by Steve Lansdown’s love child Bristol Sport has once again failed and within the context of sporting rivalry, I sort of get that. There is a place for glorying in the other team’s failure, but how far should it go? Not, I would suggest, where the rugby is concerned.

Lansdown has owned Bristol RFC for a few years now and this season moved the club to Ashton Gate. I do not know whether Bristol Rovers, who own the Memorial Stadium, the spiritual home of the rugby club, made any efforts to keep them there, but I am pretty sure they didn’t make any efforts to help them improve and ultimately succeed and get into the top flight. They were there for the rent and the beer money, just tenants. Lansdown saw more than just offering a tenancy and Bristol Sport has taken the club under its wing. And under Lansdown, we know they are far more likely to play in the Premiership. As mere rent-paying tenants at the Mem, they were destined for nothing better than Championship mediocrity.

And there’s another thing: without the rugby club, there might not be a Bristol Rovers, certainly not one playing in Bristol. Without the deal to return the club to Bristol from Bath, where on earth would Rovers be today? Twerton Park, in front of a couple of thousand people? Would Nick Higgs be parading on the top deck of a bus tour on bank holiday Monday?

It’s a simple fact that Bristol RFC are now more likely to succeed at Ashton Gate. Surely for rugby fans that’s a good thing? We can moan about Lansdown’s tax status – as I often do!- but is it enough just to hate the club just because they’re owned by Lansdown? On the basis of that argument, you’d assume the only reason people support Bristol Rovers is because they love Nick Higgs. Perhaps that is the reason many people love the club, but I doubt it.

Bristol as a city is a massive sporting underachiever. Do the people who are cheering Bristol’s failure really want us to stay that way? Is it really enough to have their own club back in League Two, as long as the other teams don’t do well? Christ: what ambition that would represent.

I am not a huge rugby union fan but I do want to see Bristol doing well on the sporting front. I might draw the line when it comes to Bristol City, for obvious historical reasons, but I would rather Bristol enjoyed success across the piece rather than wishing that everyone else failed.