Will Sale tame the mighty Bears?

Round 8 of the Premiership gets underway on Friday evening at Ashton Gate with the flying-high Bristol Bears hosting Sale Sharks.

Bristol’s only worry at the moment is that they may be peaking too soon. Last weekend they blitzed Bath at Ashton Gate 48-3. The weekend before, they toppled defending champs Exeter Chiefs at Sandy Park. In fact, should they beat Sale on Friday, it will be their seventh victory on the trot – their only loss of this campaign occurring in Round 1 when they sunk to a 3-point defeat against Wasps. It is thus not surprising that, with a record like that, they currently find themselves atop the leader board.

Sale are also in a good space at the moment with five victories from seven outings. In Round 7, they travelled to Welford Road and pulled off a 10-point win over Leicester Tigers in an exciting game in which the visitors managed a 2-point lead at half-time despite looking to be the dominated team. The second half was a different story as Sale came out firing, doing enough to win although they were made to work hard.

Sale occupy third spot on the log, hot on the heels of Exeter who they will be keen to leap-frog at the first opportunity.

Something which adds more interest to this encounter is that the most recent 2019-20 fixture between these two ended in a thumping for Bristol who left the field with the scoreboard reading 40-7 in Sale’s favour. In fairness, it was something of a second-string Bristol side that evening, though Sale will no doubt not have forgotten it.

All things considered, this game should be a cracker between two confident teams.