London Irish head coach Tony Booth admitted the Exiles were fortunate to come away with the points against Bristol on Sunday.
Bristol coach rues handling errors in home loss
Bristol boss Richard Hill felt his side did enough to deserve victory over London Irish after a second-half fightback that ultimately came to nothing.
The 18-13 triumph for the Exiles took them to the top of the Premiership for the first time since October 1999, but it required a second-half interception try from Shane Geraghty to get the job done and leave Bristol rooted to the bottom of the table.
"Normally, I would say the better team won but, on this occasion, we deserved to win that and I feel very sorry for the players, they put a lot of effort into that second half, particularly," said Hill.
"They had it well under control and the only time that Irish actually got the ball is when we gave it to them on a plate. It happens but it is our own fault.
"We are bitterly disappointed and sometimes you wonder what you have got to do to win a game. Lady Luck is probably not on our side at the moment but we are partly responsible for that ourselves.
"We will keep battling away and, hopefully, we will get those little narrow wins we need.
"At 11-0, you could almost sense that Irish thought that was not enough. At half-time, all the players thought it was achievable to peg back that lead. The crowd got behind us and, really, there was only one team in it then.
"And we had the game under control until that interception try which was a bit cruel when you see a team which are top of the league now and we dominated them for 40 minutes."
Simple game
London Irish head coach Tony Booth admitted the Exiles were fortunate to come away with the points.
"It feels like a bit of a loss, to be honest. All credit to Bristol, they were very good," he said.
"In the second half, every time we got to the halfway line, we gave the ball back. We certainly didn't make life easy for ourselves and we probably needed to be more clinical in the first half. Then the whole thing would have been a different game.
"Rugby is a simple game. If you control the ball, it is simple. You push the balls into the corner and the people who do that better and control the game are often the ones that come out on top.
"They scored first straight after half-time and we said the first score then would be vital and, as a result, we let them in the game. Fair play to them, they are very committed.
"But I do want our boys to kick on and achieve the best they can."
