The way Harlequins threw the ball around with abandon against opponents who themselves are in relegation trouble suggested they did not believe they would be demoted if they finish at the bottom of the Premiership, the position they continue to occupy despite a bonus point yesterday.
Even though the chief executive of the Rugby Football Union, Francis Baron, is adamant the First Division leaders Rotherham will be promoted if crowned champions, there are whispered suggestions that the Premiership could be expanded to 14 sides to ensure draw cards such as Bath and Quins, who are locked in a battle at the bottom with Leeds, are not lost.
Quins were as poor, in a totally different way, as Bath had been the day before against Northampton. Whereas the West Country club, whose neighbours Bristol did them no favours yesterday by conceding a late penalty try which allowed the visitors to secure a bonus point, defended with resolution but showed little creativity in attack, Harlequins scored four tries and wasted four other clear opportunities. Their tackling, however would have shamed a pub team on the last leg of a long tour.
To concede six tries to Bristol takes some doing - Bedford were the last side to do so in a league match two years ago - but the manner in which they were given away, with one-on-one tackles missed from set pieces, showed why Quins are in such a mess; the incredulous expression on the face of their head coach Mark Evans said far more than his words.
"Unforgivable," he said. "We were far too loose considering we were playing away from home against another side in trouble. We dropped off too many tackles, we failed to get our inside game going and we gave the ball away too easily. I had given up by the last 10 minutes."
Bristol, who had lost six of their previous seven league matches, made three attacks in the opening 30 minutes and scored two ludicrously simple tries. Agustin Pichot took a quick penalty in his own half to set up the first, the No8 Ben Sturnham charging through feeble tackling on a 35-yard run to set up the wing Phil Christophers, and then Felipe Contepomi danced through another soft challenge to score under the posts.
Those easy tries contrasted with the sinew-straining, last-ditch tackles by the prop Paul Johnstone and the centre Andrew Higgins on Tony Diprose and Ben Gollings respectively in the opening quarter, when Quins had worked space down the right wing.
There was a moment when Bristol looked to have thrown it away as the centre Nick Greenstock scored tries either side of half-time to bring Quins back to 17-15: his second came after the visitors, for once, had driven some hard yards at the fringes of breakdowns.
Just as they had clawed their way back, Quins imploded. The second row Steve White-Cooper was sent to the sin-bin for tripping Garath Archer after a lineout for the second time and after the scrum-half Nick Duncombe had gifted Bristol a five-yard scrum with a wayward pass over his own goalline, the flanker Andrew Sheridan powered over the line.
The rest was a procession. Higgins waltzed through attempted tackles by Greenstock and Ace Tiatia from a scrum and, after the home replacement prop Emiliano Bergamaschi had been shown the yellow card for a professional foul, Lee Best and Christophers ran past the hapless Gollings.
Bristol relaxed to concede two late scores, which could prove costly to Bath, but the fate of the side that finishes bottom may be resolved not at the Recreation Ground and the Stoop - Leeds must visit both grounds - but in a committee room where it will be decided if the stragglers are too commercially important to go down. Small wonder rugby is the butt of cynics' humour.
Bristol : Williams (Best 46min); Rees, Higgins, Little (capt; Drahm 76), Christophers; Contepomi, Pichot; Johnstone (Bergamaschi h-t), McCarthy (Nelson 62), White, Archer, Brown, Sheridan (Short 68), Lipman (Morgan 78), Sturnham.
Tries : Christophers 2, Contepomi, Sheridan, Higgins, Best. Conversions : Contepomi 5. Penalty : Contepomi.
Sin-bin : Bergamaschi 69min
Harlequins : Gollings; Jewell, Greenwood, Greenstock, Luger; Burke, Duncombe (Powell 62); Leonard (Starr 74), Wood (capt), Olver, Codling, White-Cooper (Morgan 63), Winters, Tiatia (Sheriff 68), Diprose.
Tries : Greenstock 2, Wood, Penalty try. Conversions : Burke 2. Penalty : Burke.
Sin-bin : White-Cooper 52min
Referee : A Spreadbury (Bristol)
Attendance : 5,618.
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