Getting nilled in our big festive home game in front of the season’s biggest crowd chock-full of potential new half season ticket and Big Day Out purchasers wasn’t quite what the Bristol Bears Marketing Department would have hoped for, but that’s sport for you.

There’s always an opposition team looking to upset the apple cart and Sale Sharks did just that in the most clinical, hard nosed and frankly impressive way possible with their 38-0 victory. They dismantled our game plan and stripped it like a Boxing Day turkey until there was no flesh left on the carcass, leaving the wave of festive record-breaking optimism that had grown through the week to break hard on the shore of rugby reality. At times it didn’t just feel like a wake-up call for the fans but more like a full-on red alert emergency.

READ MORE: Bristol Bears dealt huge title blow as AJ MacGinty set for surgery

READ MORE: Bristol Bears player ratings from heavy defeat to Sale Sharks - 'Agonising growing pains'

READ MORE: Bristol Bears dealt huge title blow as AJ MacGinty set for surgery

However, now I’ve got that out of the way lets look at the positives! Last week I waxed lyrical about the Bears Way and had probably been on the sherry a little bit too early, but I think that this match just proved my wider point. We need teams like Bristol to be courageous and rather than giving up we need to double down on the intent but find new ways to counter the sort of existential threat that Sale provided. Of course this isn’t going to be easy for us. We have a crippling injury list from an already small squad, we play a game that requires consistently high skill execution, and we need officials to help us out a bit when the opposition tries to slow us down. We were also a bit naïve on Friday and needed a cooler head on the pitch to change the narrative, with a few more long kicks to the corner or chip-and-chases over the top to push the rush defence back. We just need to somehow apply a layer of pragmatism and earn the right to showcase our dazzling offence.

We have yet another tough game at Saracens on Saturday but at least it’s away and with only two European games and Newcastle Falcons to come before the long Six Nations break, we may well be in a solid position to rehabilitate our injured players for when the Premiership resumes after that and still have a good chance of making the play offs!

Listen to the latest episode of the pod on all major platforms and leave a rating or review!