Match Preview: Bite or be bitten

By Ed Scott
September 29 2011

On Saturday afternoon, Bath host their old friends Leicester in the fifth round of this years Aviva Premiership. The history behind this fixture is well documented, but for a change, this year Bath are not facing a team high on confidence or indeed above them in the table.

With reflection always important, I want to spend a brief moment to talk about losing to Gloucester (again!) last weekend. Essentially, we once more seemed to lack leadership, drive and the ability to finish. Is that due to players missing? Can we put it down to a lack of direction from above? Is Farleigh too much of a luxury retreat rather than a brutal hard knocks training facility? I've no idea, but if the belief is true that players didn't seem to want it enough in a game against Gloucester, then when will they be motivated? At home to Leicester? We sincerely hope so.

If we thought that our start to the season has been somewhat disappointing. Trying being a Leicester fan. I've not looked at the statistics, but I am pretty sure that no one has ever scored 50 points against the Tigers at Welford Road? And I'm guessing that we would have to go back some time to find out when they last lost three of their first four league games. The question on everyone's lips of course, is will we pay for their poor performances in defeat, or take advantage of their form and low morale to inflict loss number four?

Last week I talked about the impact on Gloucester of losing seven first choice players to the Rugby World Cup, with ourselves also seven down (if you include Stephen Donald staying in NZ just in case he gets called up by the All Blacks). Add those two together and you only just get over the total number of first choice players Leicester have lost. This has been made worse by the fact that the highly influential Thomas Waldron has just been officially added to the England Squad.

The basic facts mean that, including a multitude of injuries, Leicester are never going to field such a weakened team against us. It has been a long time since we have played the Tigers and actually been the favourites, but this is surely the case on Saturday. Many are not happy with the 'favourites' tag, but let's face it, we didn't exactly tear up trees against them when we were the underdogs! Richard Cockerill this week has been quoted saying that Leicester had an 'old fashioned' training session this week with several players off afterwards for stitches. Mind games, or the truth, who knows? Personally I'm not sure that kind of thing creates a performance, but maybe Bath do need a bit more fight. Regardless of all the missing players, they will be no pushover and we need to take this very seriously.

Last week the scrum was a major talking point. After two poor performances in this area, surely we will see some improvement moving forward? With third and fourth choice props playing against us, we must look to dominate in this area and get some quality front foot ball. One thing that is certain, is that Julian Salvi will play out of his skin on Saturday, so fast ball will be tricky to come by when it comes to the breakdown.

I would imagine that team selection this week will mostly be dependent on injuries. Fearns has a knock but apparently will be fit. Taylor, Hooper, Flatman, Williams and Dixon all missed last week, but with few of those seemingly serious, it may well be that we welcome several back into the squad. Last weekend I think we were unable to bring on experience from the bench to steady the ship, so hopefully this week we will have a bit more depth.

For me, we need to hit Leicester hard, fast and direct. I think if we can get early scores on the board their heads will drop. It is looking like being a dry warm day, so we have to get our backs into the game and get over the whitewash. I feel that Leicester will try and slow the game down to grind out a win. For me, it's time to be a bit more ambitious and take some chances.

Regardless of who is playing, Leicester games are always special and always tough. We have a golden opportunity to put one over the old enemy, but anything less than 100% commitment and we could be staring at another home defeat. Time to show that a Bath bite is worse than a Tigers.

Match Preview: Bite or be bitten

Posted by: BathRugbyEre.co.uk (IP Logged)

Date: 29/09/2011 15:55

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011:10:02:14:55:58 by Susanne.