Arrogance or Apathy from Bath faithful?

Arrogance? At Bath?!?!?
By Andy Brown
April 3 2008

There’s a strange lack of chat on the Bath messageboard about the forthcoming fixture at the Rec. The visit of any team in a European quarter-final you’d have thought would be a hot topic for debate. What team should they put out? Who are the prime candidates for the game? Can they make it past the quarters and get into serious contention for their first bit of silverware in living memory?

But no, there's none of this going on. And the reasons? Who knows?

Perhaps it's plain arrogance. Bath fans have had a reputation for it in the past. After all, the quarter finalists we're talking about are Leeds - minnows of the top division, and soon to be smashed down back to where they came from and good riddance too. Cheeky northern oiks, coming up to the top competition and thinking they can mix it with the thoroughbreds of rugby, and not even having the common decency to buy beyond their means a load of southern hemisphere "stars" playing for a pay-cheque. Is that what's going on in the minds of the Somerset faithful?

Michael Lipman has warned the team not to be complacent. In the local press, the England and Bath no. 7 has called to his teammates and supporters to take Leeds seriously - "They may be heading back to National 1, but they have nothing to lose this weekend [...] they have relaxed in the Premiership now that the relegation issue is all but settled [...]" The obvious implication being that he's worried the Bath team and coaches are talking about the semi-final at the Rec. The journo in that particular piece gives it away somewhat when he writes "Sale tackle Brive at Edgeley Park tomorrow night with the winners lined up for a semi-final trip to The Rec, provided Bath see off Leeds."

Or, maybe the fact that there is so little discussion about it is because they don't care? Currently sitting second in the Premiership table, it seems impossible for them to finish outside the Heineken Cup qualification places for next year, and the only real benefit to anyone of winning the current European Challenge Cup is an automatic Heineken spot for next year. So for the team at least there's no real incentive to do anything other than the bare minimum to get through the fixtures (if you put aside the momentary joy that is winning a second-tier cup competition). Many of the older Bath fans are used to success and thus would not see progression past this stage as anything other than utterly and totally expected.

My own view? I think there's perhaps a small tinge of arrogance in it from a few individuals, but the predominant feeling I get is one of apathy. Just who cares anyway about this trophy when it doesn't do anything for you, and the quarterfinal is against so obviously poor a team as Leeds that the win is pretty much guaranteed? The projection for ticket sales at the Rec appears to be pretty low, and a sell-out at the ground is unlikely for the first time in a while. When there's hard-earned cash to stump up (and the price for tickets at the Rec for what is frankly an astonishingly bad view of the action is dreadfully high), perhaps this is one you'd choose to save your cash on and sort out seats for the Premiership play-offs instead.