London Welsh have one foot in Premiership with win over Bristol

London Welsh have a 19-point advantage over Bristol going into next week’s Championship final second leg after winning 27-8 at the Kassam Stadium last night.
Bristol, who have been favourites to win promotion for most of the season, started the game best with Marco Mama going over from a perfectly executed catch and drive but two tries in three minutes swung the momentum in the Exiles’ favour.
First Nathan Trevett put the home side in the lead before Nick Scott raced over from 60 metres to make it 14-5.
It went from bad to worse for Bristol as they had to see Ryan Jones being stretched off with a nasty-looking ankle injury before a penalty from veteran fly-half Gordon Ross gave Welsh a 17-5 lead at the break.
Justin Burnell’s men kept the pressure on Bristol at the start of the second half and four minutes in Carl Kirwan bundled over for another Welsh try.
The game was won and another penalty from Ross and one from replacement Adrian Jarvis for Bristol kept the 19-point gap intact.
London Welsh head coach Justin Burnell said: “We know Bristol are very capable of scoring a lot of points. It will be a test of their attack against our defence so there is still a long way to go.
“We should be going there 26 or 27 points in front. I’m disappointed we didn’t kill them off as Nick Scott butchered a late chance when I thought he was under the posts.”
Bristol head coach Andy Robinson added: “I’m disappointed but London Welsh played really well. It’s only 19 points and at one stage it looked like it could be a lot worse but we stemmed the tide.
“They played the conditions really well. It’s a huge challenge. It’s a bad performance and it’s being able to bring your A game to this stage and we didn’t.
“London Welsh had the right tactics in these conditions and fair play to them. We are under big pressure now.”