Rugby Union / Commentary: Bristol on the scent of former glories: Hanlon heralds a new era of success

BRIAN HANLON'S arrival in Bristol was the stuff of romance, literally and figuratively, though it is his New Zealand realism that is now promising a great club a future that may come to match the distinction of its past.

The coaching director (never 'coach', or Bristol would have Dudley Wood on to them from Twickenham) hopes so, anyway. The very fact that he was a complete outsider who knew nothing of an august but faded institution has been fundamental to his, and Bristol's, success.

Success is finishing fourth in the First Division of the Courage Championship, comfortably Bristol's best in the league's seven

seasons. That would not be success for Bath, their irksome, Double- seeking neighbours, but you have to begin somewhere and this is a long stride along a winding road.

Bristol concluded their programme by beating Leicester 40-22 at the Memorial Ground and there would have been something hopelessly amiss if they had not. The Tigers, next Saturday's cup final on their mind, picked a second team in the certain knowledge that nothing Bristol's firsts could do would displace them as runners-up to Bath.

It was an animated, entertaining game to which Leicester fully contributed and which would have been won by still more if Bristol had nailed down their chances - as Bath habitually do - which they have not done all season. Bristol do not yet possess killer instinct and Hanlon is trying to instil it. Back home it is second nature.

Hanlon, 35, coached the North Harbour Under-21 side, and Auckland is where he would be now but for an unlikely sequence of events that occurred when he and his intended visited the West Country last autumn. They - Hanlon and Bristol RFC, that is - were clearly made for each other.

'I came over on holiday with my fiancee, who is a Bristol girl, to meet her family and I read a newspaper article saying Bristol desperately needed a coach,' he said. 'I had no idea who Bristol were, so I just came down, said I was from New Zealand and asked if I could help out.'

After the traumas that have arisen from the ill-fated appointments of first Colin McFadyean and then Rob Cunningham, who departed in acrimony at the end of last season (and has subsequently left Havant too), anything was worth a try. Bristol had begun the season without a head coach; by the middle of October they belatedly had one. Or, to be more precise, a coaching director. 'I had no preconceived notions and no idea at all of the history of the club.

'After four weeks I was appointed on a six-month trial but

after three months I was invited to sign a five-year contract. I said two years and we agreed on three.' For Hanlon, ignorance was bliss, and under his tutelage Bristol have developed as good a pack as there is in the First Division.

Tactically and strategically, the team are far more attuned to the necessities of league rugby and everyone at the Memorial Ground exudes confidence that they are nearly ready to take an elite place alongside the Baths and Leicesters.

Stuffy old thinking is now recognised as outdated thinking. 'We have probably been five years behind Bath in the recruitment business,' Bill Redwood, Bristol's chairman, conceded. 'I was always dyed in the wool that we should stick with home players, but that has gone by the board through sheer economics. To make money nowadays, you have to have winning sides.'

The 'recruitment business' will bring Craig Chalmers, the erstwhile Scotland stand-off, to Bristol next season - or so we are told. Chalmers has certainly signed up and, according to the optimistic Hanlon, all Bristol have to do is 'find him a post before September'. Nothing too demanding, one supposes.

Before and long after Redwood was the England scrum-half in 1968, Bristol were untouchable among the elite, but then came the meritocracy of league rugby and they have been consistently nearer the bottom than the top of the First Division. 'We have had a few mis-hits' is how the chairman euphemistically puts it - another way of saying the hearts of a few grand old Bristolians like himself have sometimes been close to breaking.

'We are better placed than for years,' Redwood insisted as he thought back to Bristol's last major occasion, the 1988 cup final they lost to Harlequins. The white knight from the land of the All Blacks concurs: 'Everybody is expecting Bristol to win now. A couple of seasons ago everybody would have been expecting us to lose.'

Thus does Hanlon show how smartly he has caught up on club history, ancient and modern. When Bristol were in fashion, notably under the fondly remembered John Blake from 1957-61, they were celebrated for the bravura of their rugby in an era when the game was more strangulated than it is even now.

Hanlon now knows all about that as well. 'We like to move the ball in the old Bristol style,' he said. Not willy-nilly, however. 'When I got here, they were playing a Barbarians-style game where they weren't controlling the ball. That's changed: first we have to get field position, then we throw it around. It's a game plan that has worked. I think I've given them more confidence; I definitely gave them more direction.'

It was too much for Leicester's reserves. Tomorrow their selectors will announce a cup-final team containing none of those who played at Bristol, even though there were some excellent players, exemplified by the utterly wasted Chris Tarbuck. The Bristol defence was a suitably bad joke when Tarby launched himself from a scrum for the Tigers' first try.

The others, by Chris Johnson (who next season will be the Northampton hooker) and Tom Rey nolds, betrayed Bristol's continuing fallibility. At the same time, the home team had five, of which Ian Patten's two and Mark Denney's one justified burgeoning reputations. Paul Hull's two explained why England are taking him to South Africa and Simon Shaw's barnstorming performance why the 6ft 9in lock should be making the trek as well.

Bristol: Tries Hull 2, Patten 2, Denney; Conversions Tainton 3; Penalties Tainton 3. Leicester: Tries Tarbuck, Johnson, Reynolds; Conversions Liley 2; Penalty Liley.

Bristol: P Hull; D John, M Denney, R Knibbs, R Kitchin; M Tainton, K Bracken; A Sharp (A Lathrope, 70), M Regan, D Hinkins, S Shaw, A Blackmore, I Patten, C Barrow, D Eves (capt).

Leicester: J Liley; S Hackney, R Robinson (J Hamilton, 67), S Roke, T Reynolds; N Malone, B Gabriel; D Jelley, C Johnson, J Wingham (J Aldwinkle, 79), P Grant, T Smith (capt), O Wingham, C Tarbuck, W Drake-Lee.

Referee: D Matthews (St Helens).