Northampton 8 (8)
Try: Cohen
Pen: Spencer

Bristol 14 (0)
Tries: Lima, To'oala
Cons: Strange 2

High-flying Bristol recovered from the serious injury to Dan Ward-Smith to seal an attritional win which increases Northampton's relegation worries.

Saints dominated the opening half but only had a Carlos Spencer penalty and an unconverted try from Ben Cohen to show for their efforts.

Bristol got back into the game on 44 minutes when Brian Lima ran in after intercepting Daniel Browne's pass.

And Alfie To'oala was bundled over on 70 minutes to seal the unlikely win.

Bristol's hard-fought victory never looked on the cards after a first half in which they hardly saw the ball.

Northampton camped deep in Bristol territory for most of the half and were on their opponent's line when Ward-Smith's carry from the base of a scrum on 14 minutes led to him suffering a suspected dislocated kneecap - an injury which could end his season.

Spencer added a penalty soon afterwards and Bristol were reduced to 14 men when Lima was sin-binned for not rolling away in the tackle.

And Northampton looked like they were going to take control when Cohen dived over in the corner for his 100th try for his club.

But the points did not come and dogged Bristol showed why they are at the right end of the table with an impressive fightback in the second half.

Lima ran in from 80m to set Bristol on their way and they were given added impetus when Saints prop Soane Tonga'uiha was yellow-carded for pulling down a maul.

As the second half got increasingly fractious, Bristol lock Gareth Llewellyn was sin-binned for punching.

And the decisive blow for the visitors came with 10 minutes to go when Northampton lock Christian Short was binned for pulling down a rolling maul close to his own line.

From the resulting penalty touch, To'oala was driven over and despite Northampton's best efforts, they could not find the breakthrough even with Sean Hohneck's sin-binning late on.

"The dislocated kneecap is probably a six-week injury with no complications. Although it was put back into place on the pitch, that's his Six Nations over.

"But if he's ruptured his patella tendon then that's a six-monther and we just have to wait to see the results of the scan on Monday morning.

"It's a terrible thing to happen to a young man and it's really cruel luck for him."

"We never built up enough momentum in the first half and we were missing a bit of inspiration.

"We asked for a lot of energy and we got that, but we made two or three errors in attack that cost us.

"If we can put that much effort into every game for the rest of the season we'll still be very hard to beat."

Northampton: Diggin; Lamont, Kydd, Quinlan, Cohen; Spencer, Robinson; Tonga'uiha, Hartley, Budgen, D. Browne, Short, Tupai, Fox, D Browne.
Replacements: Richmond for Hartley (79), Lewitt for Fox (65).
Not Used: Emms, Lord, J. Howard, Laird, Bourett.

Sin Bin: Tonga'uiha (48), Short (70).

Bristol: Taumalolo; Lima, Brew, Higgitt, Lemi; Strange, Perry; Clarke, Regan, Crompton, Winters, Llewellyn, Salter, To'oala, Ward-Smith.
Replacements: Hilton for Clarke (65), Hohneck for Llewellyn (64), R Pennycock for Ward-Smith (14).
Not Used: Linkmater, O'Riordan, C Morgan, Gray.

Sin Bin: Lima (15), Llewellyn (54), Hohneck (80).

Att: 12,876

Referee: Sean Davey (RFU).