Leicester Tigers went top of the Gallagher PREM, for tonight at least, with a bonus-point 22-16 victory over Bristol Bears at Ashton Gate.

Their lineout and Billy Searle’s left boot outlasted a Bristol side who won the battle on the floor but lost two men to the bin in three minutes.

Here are our key takeaways from the clash in the West Country.

The top line

If you’re a set-piece purist, Friday night at Ashton Gate was one for the scrapbook. After a run of weekends in which PREM scorelines have read more like cricket scores, Legends Night served up a proper, old-fashioned arm-wrestle, with Bristol in the lettered shirts of their heritage, both packs going at each other at scrum and lineout, and a breakdown contest so fierce that the ball was in genuine danger every time it hit the floor.

Leicester won it in the air. Bristol took only 71 per cent of their own lineout ball against Leicester’s 94, Ollie Chessum, the clear player of the match, spent the evening pinching their throws, and the one time Leicester had a lineout ten metres out, they mauled Jamie Blamire over for the bonus-point try. Bristol won the floor, six turnovers to two, and the kicking metres were all but identical at 954 to 951, but Leicester’s kicks went into the right places, and three of their four tries came off Searle’s boot, two of them whilst Bristol were short-handed.

Up front, the scrum was a chess match. Ellis Genge and Joe Heyes didn’t shift each other an inch until Genge finally won one early in the second half and let the whole ground know about it, whilst on the other side Archie van der Flier and Blamire double-teamed George Kloska, working to split him from his hooker rather than simply shove him backwards, which is very clever scrummaging from a young loosehead. Luke Pearce let the breakdown be a genuine contest and was consistent on the high hits, which is why a night of six Bristol turnovers and two near-identical yellow cards hung together.

Bristol win the floor, but the lineout costs them

Make no mistake, Bristol’s work on the deck kept them in this match whilst other parts fell apart. Pat Lam’s side commit as few bodies as they can to the defensive ruck, leave the opposition ball exposed and back their jackals to win it, and with Luka Ivanishvili, who won three turnovers, Fitz Harding, Steven Luatua and Pedro Rubiolo all hunting, it worked; even Matias Moroni’s first act on returning from the bin was to win one at the ruck.

But the same decision cuts the other way on Bristol’s own ball. Keep bodies on their feet and the scrum-half has nobody protecting him at the base, which is why Harry Randall, otherwise excellent, had box kicks charged down, and Leicester’s first try started from a Randall box kick they reclaimed, Cameron Henderson carrying hard down the middle before Searle, standing at second receiver, put a left-footed kick into the corner for Freddie Steward. One more body committed to the ruck, a caterpillar to give the nine two metres of room, and that problem goes away.

The lineout is the harder fix. Off 71 per cent of your own throw there’s no platform to launch from, so almost every attacking position Bristol had came from turnover ball, and turnover ball arrives wherever the breakdown happens to be rather than where you’d choose to attack from.

Searle’s boot and the cost of the cards

Bristol’s two yellow cards were near carbon copies. On 31 minutes James Williams tackled Solomone Kata low, and as Kata went down Moroni, still upright, came in as the second man and caught him shoulder to head; three minutes later Gabriel Oghre chopped Henderson and Tom Jordan did exactly the same. Moroni apologised and the pair shook hands, which was a nice moment, and he’s one of the most underrated players in the world game, a man who makes every backline he plays in look better, but twice in three minutes makes it a tackle-technique question Lam will be asking on Monday. Bristol spent decades refusing to wear numbers, and picked Legends Night to be outnumbered by two by a side in numbers.

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Searle didn’t need asking twice. With Jordan gone, there was no full-back to sweep, so from his own ten-metre line he put a kick into the empty grass, it sat up on Bristol’s five-metre line and Adam Radwan, the quickest Englishman in the league, was gone. Five minutes later, with Bristol still short, Leicester had a lineout five metres out and Searle went wide off his left foot to Ollie Hassell-Collins, who had the best part of 40 metres of nobody.

It wasn’t a flawless night for him. He dropped a Jordan clearance in open field with nobody near him, converted only one of four tries and hit the post with a late penalty. Even so, Bristol kicked three metres further than Leicester all night, and Searle’s three kicks into space helped sink the hosts.

Letters, not numbers

Legends Night put Bristol back in letters, and good for them to reclaim a tradition. Leicester, whose own lettered tradition runs every bit as deep, stayed in numbers, as you might suspect two sets of letters running in opposite directions would have been one riddle too many for the league. Leicester wore them from 1926, the forwards first and the whole side by 1931, with A, B and C for the front-row through to O at full-back and the back row lettered left to right, so the flankers wore F and H and the No 8 wore G; Bristol ran it the other way round, with A at full-back. Tigers gave theirs up in 1998, when professional, televised rugby wanted standard numbering so newcomers could follow it.

Here’s the thing, though: in rugby the number tells you the job. A 1 is a loosehead, a 3 is a tighthead, a 7 is an openside, and you can’t call an 8 a 22. By the late 1990s, Harlequins and Wasps were already flirting with squad numbers, football style, where a striker in 47 tells you nothing except that somebody in the club shop wanted a new shirt to sell. A Telegraph correspondent called numbering ‘cattle-branding’ back in 1936, and he had a point.

Rugby’s quirks have always meant something. Bath stopped using 13 after Clifford Walwin died following a match against Cross Keys in December 1919, so Jeremy Guscott wore 14 at the Rec and 12 for England and the Lions despite playing outside centre, with Will Carling in 13 inside him, and Will Greenwood won a World Cup in 2003 at inside centre wearing 13, with Mike Tindall outside him in 12. A fortnight ago the Lions retired the 5 jersey of Hyron Andrews, who died at the team hotel before their Champions Cup game in La Rochelle, and Ruan Delport played in 24 to keep it empty.

One request, mind. If we’re going to spend an evening decoding the alphabet, the programmes should print full initials, like in days of old. LBN Dallaglio sounds an awful lot more sinister than Lol Dallaglio.

England and Wales watch

Nine days before England open their November campaign against Australia at Twickenham, and a few days after Steve Borthwick’s squad trained at Pennyhill Park, Genge, Chessum, Steward, Heyes and company were back out at Ashton Gate in a full-blooded PREM fixture. Nobody got broken this time, but if one Test player had, it would have exposed the sheer folly of the scheduling.

The big question is where Chessum starts. He captains Leicester from the second-row and was colossal there, but Test rugby is a collision game, and if you want to beat the best you have to be big, which is the case for picking him at 6, where he gives Borthwick a third lineout option without costing a specialist lock his place. Steward marked his 100th PREM start with a try, and on this evidence van der Flier won’t be far from an England shirt either.

Wales will also be happy from their PREM exploits though. Louis Rees-Zammit was the most dangerous player on the pitch with ball in hand, with 88 metres and 12 defenders beaten, and his try came when Randall’s flat pass found him, Olly Cracknell had shot off the pillar and Heyes was left two out; Rees-Zammit stepped off his left foot past Heyes whilst Aaron Wainwright grasped at thin air, which means a Welshman beat two Welsh internationals to score it. Add Dewi Lake, who captains Wales, and Jac Morgan at Gloucester, plus Dafydd Jenkins at Exeter, and the PREM is handing Steve Tandy a core of players hardened week in, week out, ahead of three home Tests at the Principality Stadium, against Japan on 7 November, New Zealand on 14 November and Australia on 21 November.