Paul Hull was 'bitterly disappointed' after watching Bristol lose 23-17 at home to Leicester.
Leicester come from behind to pile more misery on GP basement boys
Head coach Paul Hull was 'bitterly disappointed' after watching Bristol lose 23-17 at home to Leicester.
The Tigers' fourth victory in a row took them top of the Guinness Premiership table, but rock-bottom Bristol - who earned a losing bonus point - made them battle all the way for the win.
The home side were ahead 14-7 at the break and it was their second-half performance that let them down.
"We are bitterly disappointed by the defeat," Hull said.
"We do want good performances, we do want to improve our game plan, but at the end of the day you do want to win games.
"We got ourselves in a very good position at half-time and we started the second half quite strongly.
"But nine penalties and a free-kick against us didn't contribute to us getting any field position and Leicester capitalised on that.
"This is our fourth week of training and working towards my philosophy as a coach but it is going to take time. I know that and so do the players are they are excited about playing the new style.
Improvement
"I have only been in charge for a few weeks and we had a good meeting of the players and coaches where we set out our goals. We know where we are, we can't change that but what we will do is try to improve our performances.
"We will show passion to the supporters, that we won't give up. The players are enjoying training and hopefully enjoying the game. They don't enjoy losing but there is hope for the future.
"We are going to build on that and get some wins on the sheet but we couldn't get a stranglehold on the game having played to the conditions and the ref very well.
"I thought my first win was tonight, I thought that win was a couple of weeks ago against Harlequins but it will come. I am fully confident that win will come hopefully sooner rather than later."
Acting Leicester head coach Richard Cockerill expected Bristol to pose a tough challenge but believes Hull's team will struggle to avoid the drop as they are fast running out of games.
"We did some good things in the first half but we coughed up a lot of chances, which has been a trait in the past few weeks," Cockerill said.
Tide turned
"But with the injuries that occurred early on, the tide turned against us.
"Bristol took their tries very well, they were from our mistakes but they still had to score them. We were under a little bit of pressure and getting a little flustered.
"We had them under a lot of pressure and they gave a lot of penalties away. In the end we probably deserved to win although it was very close, but I was expecting that having played here over the past 15 years.
"It is not an easy place to win regardless and look at their results - apart from the odd one, they have all been very close."
Leicester's victory was tempered by injuries to three players during the first half.
Wing Matt Smith (ankle) and scrum-half Julien Dupuy (hamstring) are expected to be available next weekend, but flanker Marco Wentzel (knee) looks set for several weeks out.
