Bristol extended their lead at the top of the table to six points after their biggest Premiership victory over their West Country neighbours. Bath suffered from false positives after their Covid-19 testing round last week, but there were no positives here as they were systematically picked apart to sustain a poor start to the season. Their owner, Bruce Craig, is not known for tolerating failure. Bristol led 34-3 at half-time when their director of rugby, Pat Lam, told his players to imagine it was 0-0 when they returned to the field and start again. But two quick tries tempted them to overindulge and Bath’s heaviest Premiership defeat, 68-12 to Gloucester, was not threatened, although that was as good as it got for them. “We started to play sevens rugby and I did not want to see that,” said Lam, who will not be unhappy that he has something to goad his players with in the buildup to next Friday’s encounter here with second-placed, Sale. “I am proud of the result but if the first half was a team effort the second was too individual.” Bristol are the outliers in a game that has become defence oriented, prepared to run from everywhere, if in a structured fashion. They are not a team to chase but Bath were two tries down in seven minutes, both fashioned by the stand-in fly-half Ioan Lloyd with Luke Morahan and Charles Piutau the beneficiaries, and the visitors missed 30 tackles in the opening half. Bath had the excuses of a disrupted training programme after the players were needlessly forced to isolate, the loss of their two second-rows with head injuries after 11 minutes and two yellow cards, but their kicking game amounted to giving Semi Radradra the time and space to launch counterattacks and the Fijian fully indulged himself. Andy Uren scored Bristol’s third try out of nothing after Rhys Priestland and Lloyd had exchanged penalties, fooling three defenders after a lineout, and the bonus point was secured by the hooker Bryan Byrne after 34 minutes before he added his second try two minutes before the break. His scores came while Priestland was in the sin-bin for a deliberate knock-on that denied Steven Luatua a run to the line and the fly-half was preparing to come on one minute into the second half when Radradra received a pass 15 metres inside his half. Nothing should have been on given the slow ball Bristol secured at the ruck, but Bath’s defence had operated in a zigzag rather than a straight line all night and Radradra strode past Jonathan Joseph before getting into a gallop and rounding Josh Matavesi. Bristol were then awarded a penalty try after Byrne’s replacement Will Capon, seconds after coming on, had failed to ground the ball after a driving maul with the referee, Wayne Barnes, playing advantage for Josh Bayliss’s offside that saw the flanker sent to the sin-bin. Bristol’s fifth victory in six league matches against Bath had already been secured and they started to dabble in the outrageous, losing their shape and accuracy, and it was the visitors who came closest to scoring a try in the final 28 minutes when Henry Thomas set himself to dive over the line only to be stripped of the ball by Radradra. Bath have won one of their first seven Premiership matches, although they were awarded four points after their game against London Irish was cancelled. “No panic button is being pressed but it was a poor performance and we need to do something about it,” said their director of rugby, Stuart Hooper. “The responsibility ultimately lies with me. We have some fantastic players but we are not playing as a team.”