Bristol duo Oghre and Grondona out for rest of season

Bristol Bears have lost hooker Gabriel Oghre and flanker Benjamin Grondona to season-ending injuries for the rest of the Prem campaign.

The duo were among a number of players who went off in the win away at Newcastle Red Bulls on 24 April, with director of rugby Pat Lam verbalising his dislike of the artificial 4G pitch at Kingston Park as being a factor for the injuries.

Oghre has had surgery after twisting his knee and is expected to return in time for the start of the 2026-27 season, while Grondona has a pectoral injury.

The Bears have brought in Fred Davies on an emergency loan deal from Champ side Doncaster Knights to provide more cover at hooker ahead of their four final games of the regular campaign.

"The hooker situation, we're blessed to have the quality of Harry Thacker a centurion here, and then we have Tomas Gwilliam in the academy who's been on bench a few times and played in the Prem Cup," Lam told BBC Radio Bristol.

"Geech [Ian McGeechan, Doncaster consultant of rugby] has allowed us to loan Fred Davies so he's come back into the group on Monday to add some cover into hooker position."

Oghre, 27, has been a consistent performer for Bristol this campaign, starting in all but one of his 20 appearances in all competitions, while he won his first cap for England during last summer's tour of the USA.

He tops the Prem player stats for most line-out throws won (148 out of 158) and is also in the league's top 10 players for tackles made (146) and gain line carries (67) in stats from Oval.

"He was having a great season - he's bitterly disappointed and not keen to play on 4G pitches much anymore," Lam said.

The loss of Oghre and Grondona is another blow for a Bristol side that has struggled with injuries all season in what Lam has called the worst crisis he has experienced during his coaching career.

Lock Joe Batley injured his hamstring during the warm-up of the 52-19 win over the Red Bulls, while winger Noah Heward and full-back Rich Lane both went off during the match.

However Lam said the prognosis on the trio was not as bad while Santiago Grondona and Louis Rees-Zammit, who have missed three and two games, respectively, are also back training.

"Rich Lane, he's not too bad, Batley, Heward those boys are hopefully back training on modifications, so we'll see what happens with those guys but at least it's not so bad as originally thought," he said.

The number of injuries this season has had another impact on Bristol's squad selection for their remaining games, as it has left the squad below the required level of having an average of 15 English qualified players (EQP) within every matchday 23.

As such, Argentina full-back Ben Elizalde has been loaned back to a club in his home country for the remainder of the campaign on the basis he will unlikely get gametime.

"With the amount of English guys that were injured - you have to average 15 over the season - so we're below that at the moment, I'm trying to catch up on that," Lam said.

"In some games I need to make sure I've got more than 15 English players on the field."

Bristol's victory against Newcastle coupled with Exeter's defeat by Gloucester saw the Bears move up to fourth in the last round of Prem games.

They take on sixth-placed Saracens on Saturday in a must win game for both sides.

"There's a lot riding ion this game and we want to stay in touch, with the top six all playing each other this week it's set up for a really good weekend," Lam added.