Bristol's future in the Aviva Premiership

Despite a spirited Doncaster performance that saw the Knights narrowly emerge victorious on the night 34-32, Bristol, after seven years of exile, will return to the Premiership for the 2016-17 following their overall 60-47 aggregate win in this year’s Championship play-off final.

22 points from the boot of fly-half Callum Sheedy alongside tries from Will Cliff and James Phillips was enough for the West Country side to end a two-year run of falling at the final promotion hurdle, although Doncaster, who scored five tries on Wednesday night, will be able to hold their heads high having pushed Bristol all the way across the two legs.

With Bristol now confirmed as the Aviva Premiership’s 12^th team for the 2016-17 season we cast an eye over some of the strengths and weaknesses of the newly promoted side and identify where Andy Robinson will have to strengthen his squad if an immediate return to the second tier is to be avoided.

 Strength

Casting a quick glance over the last two sides to be relegated from the Premiership – London Irish and London Welsh illuminates the importance of squad cohesion. It is an overused cliché to suggest that the best teams are greater than the sum of their parts, yet in rugby, where Exeter Chiefs are set to meet Saracens in the championship final on Saturday and Sale Sharks qualified for European Champions Cup rugby next season despite a paltry playing budget, this attitude holds some merit.

London Irish and Welsh’s respective downfalls over the last two seasons can be traced back to the wholesale turnovers experienced by both teams as they looked to strengthen their squads before their relegation campaign. London Welsh’s historically poor season in 2014-15 can be attributed to the Oxfordshire club having to bed in 25(!) new players over the course of a summer, whilst London Irish’s thirteen signings ahead of 2015-16 couldn’t prevent them having to start an 18-year-old Theo Brohpy-Clews at fly-half for large parts of their ultimately doomed campaign.

What bodes well for Bristol on their return to the Premiership is that an overhaul of the squad is far from necessary; it is a credit to the work done by Andy Robinson and Sean Holley that Bristol have already amassed a team that has the prerequisite skill and experience to not only survive, but flourish, in England’s top league next season. Tom Varndell, Will Cliff, Marc Jones, Luke Arscott, Marco Mama, Gavin Henson are all experienced Premiership veterans who will be aware of the manner in which to grind out victories at the top level whilst Anthony Perenise, Ian Evans, Jack Lam, David Lemi and Tommaso Benvenuti can all offer their amassed international expertise in a squad bursting with depth far greater than that of your traditional promoted side.

Bristol appear much like Worcester Warriors did this time last season; with stable management, international calibre talent, seasoned veterans and a soon-to-be 27,000 seat stadium, they are in a position to cement themselves as a Premiership side for years to come.

Room for Reinforcement

Despite the attributes listed above, Bristol will still be considered favourites for relegation – a rite of passage for all newly promoted sides. One area in particular where Bristol will definitely need to invest before September will be in their pack, which was the one department in which Doncaster held equilibrium, and at times ascendancy, over the two legs of the play-off final.

Scrummaging against Premiership sides is a far cry from lining up against packs in the Championship where teams are littered with part-time props and university student second-rows. Bristol, as the fixtures at Castle Arms Park and Ashton Gate showed, do not at present have the forward firepower in the front-five to compete with the likes of Saracens or Leicester, a problem that has been compounded with the news that stalwart prop Ellis Genge will be joining the Tigers next season.

If Bristol are serious about staying up next season, additional investment is needed to strengthen the front end of their pack. With the likes of Marc Jones, Anthony Perenise and Ian Evans, Bristol are not devoid of well-tested operators, but with the increasing importance of hard-nosed, grinding rugby, especially in the winter months when sides are less inclined to throw the ball around as freely as Championship sides do, Bristol need to identify some additional recruits from around the world to shore up a potentially troublesome area.

Ones to Watch

Although attention will now turn to which high-profile name Bristol can lure to spearhead their return to the big time (Rhys Priestland has been making the rounds in recent weeks) it would be foolish to discount the plethora of talent Robinson already has at his disposal and who could conceivably light up the Premiership next season.

The most obvious candidate is Jack Lam. As Samoa’s incumbent openside flanker, Lam is a global name who has risen to prominence with his combination of strength over the breakdown, abrasive ball-carrying and astute rugby instincts that makes his on-field positioning practically flawless. It speaks volumes to the clubhouse culture being built at Ashton Gate that Bristol were able to keep a world-renowned talent like Lam when bigger clubs inevitably came calling following their surprise defeat to Worcester in last year’s Championship final.

Simply too good to have remained in the Championship much longer, Lam’s prestige will only grow with exposure to England’s top competition.

Alongside Lam in the Bristol pack next season will be the highly-touted Jamal Ford-Robinson. Although he’s been backing up Anthony Perenise at tighthead for most of this season, 22-year-old Ford-Robinson has often been identified as Bristol’s long-term future at the position following his switch from Cornish Pirates in 2015.

A powerful and mobile ball-carrier, Ford-Robinson, now 22, is approaching the ideal age for a prop to make the transition from part-time to full-time starter and the news of a new contractual commitment to the club has been met with jubilation from Bristol fans eager to see the Bristol native achieve his immense potential.

Considering the paucity of elite tightheads in world rugby, Ford-Robinson’s progress will be fascinating to map next season.

In a similar vein, expect to see Callum Sheedy adopt an even more substantial role in the Bristol gameplan next season.

With Matthew Morgan joining Cardiff Blues next season and rumours swirling that Gavin Henson may be set to announce his retirement, Sheedy’s impeccable performance as starting fly-half in the play-off final triumph has him earmarked as the heir apparent to the Bristol no.10 shirt, regardless of who Bristol may or may not bring in over the summer.

Watching the play-off final over the last two weeks you’d be forgiven for not knowing Sheedy is only 20-years-old with five professional appearances under his belt, such was the Millfield alumni’s poise, deliberance and confidence in orchestrating the Bristol backline and slotting his attempts at goal where he was a perfect eight-from-eight.

Across the two legs of the play-off final, Sheedy, who only made his competitive debut in the final round of the season following injury to Matthew Morgan and Adrian Jarvis, amassed 35 points to add to the 30 points he totalled during Bristol’s semi-final victory over Bedford Blues.

Welsh-born, one imagines it won’t be long before Warren Gatland look to secure Sheedy’s national allegiance such has been the impressive nature of his performances to open his domestic career at Bristol. Whether Robinson and Holley have the confidence to promote Sheedy to full-time starting duty in the Premiership next season will depend upon what transpires over a potentially transformative summer for Bristol, but Sheedy has done more than enough over the last five weeks to earmark himself as one of the most exciting backline talents in British rugby.