Not quite the perfect day.

By Weston Dave
February 11 2012

It could so nearly have been the perfect afternoon of rugby. Despite the cold, the Rec was at its most beguiling – clear blue skies, the panorama of Bath displayed beyond, whilst the foreground contained the men of Blue Black and White playing the game we all love. Playing, scoring, winning, getting a bonus point. And yet.

But first the story.

Barely 40 seconds into the game, Newcastle infringed at a ruck, Barclay stepped up and Bath were 3-0 up. If you wanted to settle the early nerves it doesn’t get much better than that. Maybe Falcons were just that bit too keen to show they meant business, for it wasn’t long after that, that they were warned for a dangerous tackle on Vesty.

For all their early determination it took nearly ten minutes for Falcons to get a turn with the ball, only to exchange kicks with Bath and then concede a scrum by knocking on. Pressure from there led to Vesty chipping through, Woodburn narrowly missing out on a try, before Bath were awarded a penalty far out on the West stand side. Unfortunately it was beyond Barclay, but again signs of promise.

4 minutes later in almost the same field position, Heathcote showed and went, before delivering a scoring pass to Olly Woodburn who touched down in the corner. Conversion was again beyond the kicker but Bath at 8-0 – going well, or so we thought.

The dream start then morphed into nightmare. From the kick off, the ball went loose amongst the Bath backs, a horrible fumble in midfield was pounced on by Falcons, who showed some clinical handling to spin it wide, with Mark Wilson scoring in the corner. Gopperth converted leaving the scores 8-7.

The nightmare continued with Newcastle gaining a penalty attempt which they missed, but soon making their way back into the Bath 22, winning a scrum. The first attempt resulted in a penalty, which was taken as a further scrum. Newcastle took the ball on from here and via a series of rucks and mauls forced Rob Vickers over for another try – again converted by Gopperth. Score now 8-14.

Following a bout of inept aerial pingpong, where neither kicker seemed to be able to do anything more than find an opponent ready to kick the ball back, Bath managed to gain a long range penalty just inside the half way line. With less than a minute to play, Heathcote took it on, and got within inches – unfortunately the inches in question being the thickness of the crossbar which he hit!

That left the half time score 8-14, and time for a gathering of thoughts, no doubt in the dressing rooms but also in the stands and terraces.

Newcastle seemed to start the second half brighter, pressurising in the corner, and attempting a drop goal. However just as thoughts of Bath’s post half time sluggishness started to enter the mind, a great break by Perenise, followed by a chip ahead (is that allowed in the front row union?), made a try chance for Woodburn, which he exploited to the full. By now Barclay appeared to have handed over the kicking to Tom Heathcote, possibly due to a knock, but again the conversion chance was missed. Score back to 13-14. At the restart one of the Bath players was heard to say “Now we switch on”, and it appeared that this indeed was the case.

Newcastle however weren’t giving up without a fight, and again forced themselves into position for another drop goal attempt – but without reward.

Bath then charged down field, with Tom Biggs chasing a kick ahead, with nothing in front of him apart from the try line. Alongside however was Jimmy Gopperth who took one for the Falcons and took Biggs out off the ball. I can’t really blame him, I’ve seen plenty of similar instances where the culprit has escaped with a penalty, but in this instance the price was high – a penalty try and a yellow card. Heathcote converted from in front of the posts to make it 20-14.

After another period of relative stalemate, Perenise redeemed his front row credentials by grabbing a bonus point try for himself, from a rolling maul in “screen corner”, with Heathcote converted a difficult kick to bring us to 27-14.

An exchange of penalties brought us to 30-17 with five minutes to play. Bath seemed to be looking to consolidate at that score with the five points in the bag. However Newcastle to their credit never looked like giving up, and in a moment of farce grabbed a last minute try. Somehow in the build up the ball managed to bounce off at least two Bath players, each time falling kindly for Falcons, before Chudley scrambled over to give Gopperth the chance to grab the losing bonus point, which he managed without drama.

So on the face of it a good afternoon – bonus point win, and the 12 point margin from bottom extended to 16. And yet.

And yet, it wasn’t quite the perfect day. Despite many positives which I will end with, the nightmare spell in the first half, and the periods of aimlessness, point to a team still half a tone out of tune, half a beat out of rhythm. Newcastle never gave up, and their determination to keep fighting, if nothing else gives them a chance at fighting their way off the bottom – clearly the new coaching team has had a galvanising effect and on this occasion at least despite the loss their supporters can be proud of their team. So it’s hard on that basis to judge whether we struggled a bit against a team that although bottom was starting to find some form like us, or whether we’d just scraped a 6 point margin win against a side 12 points off the pace at the bottom. I don’t think we can answer that today – we can only take this result and move on. Time will tell whether we and Newcastle are on the rise, or whether we both flattered to deceive this afternoon. In a very nebulous sense, I did feel that this afternoon demonstrated a lack of structure to our attack – Woodburn and Biggs (albeit penalty try) made the best of broken play chances, but we threatened little in terms of building through midfield. Do we need an attack coach, or do we need a settled, on form 12-13 partnership, or both?

But to dwell on that would be churlish. Perenise is fast heading for Ubogu style prop idol status, and in general the pack did all that was asked of them. Special mention also has to go to Ryan Caldwell who continues to manage to look as though he’s doing far more work than anyone else. Whether that is true or not, it looks good! Biggs also manages to get through more work per pound of body weight than most. However the final plaudits must go to two players whose success always warms the heart just that little bit extra. I’ll always get more pleasure from seeing our own Academy players doing well, than a big name signing – that’s just the way my brain works, so to see Tom Heathcote make a good fist of flyhalf and getting some good kicks over, whilst Woodburn again gets on the tries column, goes a long way towards making it the perfect day. So to misquote the song –“Not quite the perfect day”, but hopefully heading that way.

Not quite the perfect day.

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

Date: 11/02/2012 19:43

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012:02:16:19:52:28 by Glen The Ed.