Bath Win Breaks Glawster's Unbeaten Home Record

Olly Barkley
By Adrian Smith
November 9 2003

The Bath bandwagon rolled in to Kingsholm and ended Glawster's 26 month unbeaten home record to the stunned West Country onlookers. This most unlikely of victories has set Bath a massive 8 points clear at the top of the table and was only marred by a serious leg injury to new boy Robbie Fleck.

A fantastic result, but not perhaps the greatest of games. A reminder of the hard fought and intensely passionate local derbies of the amateur era. Precious little in the way of incisive back play and plenty of forward rumble. That Bath came away with the victory 20-14 was perhaps as much to do with the flat-footed Gloucester attack as any commanding display by the Blue, Black and Whites.

It all looked very ominous for Bath at the start. A succession of penalties given away, 3 in the first 9 minutes put the team on the back foot. Luckily Henry Paul was having an off day and missed the second of these. Olly Barkley pulled one back after 11 minutes to make the score 6-3 to the home side. They soon built on their initial dominance by putting Marcel Garvey over in the right hand corner following a beautiful flowing move. Paul however missed the kick but it was a worrying time for the Bath faithful. Have no fear Olly is here. This young lad is really coming into his own this season. By no means a fault free afternoon, two missed penalties in the second half could have made life easier for the visitors, but he has the knack of being in the right place…..Within a minute of the Gloucester try Olly charged down an attempted clearance and won the race to the line. Converting his own try made the score 11-10. 

For all their early dominance Gloucester had failed to capitalise and though both sides seemed to have a nightmare at the lineout it was Bath who were to finish the second half the stronger after Paul had scored one of two penalty chances midway through the first half. With the score 14-10 Bath caught and drove from a lineout, Woody jinked and dummied, put Lipman through and Gloucester had to concede a penalty, Barkley converting to make it 14-13. 

The next penalty chance for Bath saw the side electing to kick to touch, ambitious, but unfortunately not an opportunity taken as the attack fizzled out. A late penalty attempt by Paul after Bath had apparently pulled down the scrum hit the posts and it was to remain 14-13 at half time.

I have to say at this point, it was almost impossible to see any stage of the play clearly. Visiting supporters continually gripe at the facilities available at the Rec, but I’m sorry, packing 11,000 into Castle Grim is a bit of a joke when a whole swathe of supporters can see only the backs of craning heads. And the left-right wobble dance to catch a sight of play between two sets of shoulder blades is frustrating to say the least.

The second half was marred almost right at the start by a lengthy delay for an injury to Robbie Fleck;  a broken leg and dislocated ankle. Are we jinxed? The casualty rate at the club is just ridiculous. After Fleck was removed on a stretcher, and I wish him a speedy recovery, replacement Robbie Kydd jinked through to score under the posts. 

Barkley converted and then the game lost its way for quite some time. Most of the second half was played in Gloucester territory, Bath happy to keep the Cherry and Whites pinned down. Olly’s two penalty misses did not really seem to matter so much at the time, as Glaws had nothing to offer in return. Any inroads they made into Bath territory fizzled out under pressure from the Bath defence and also Gloucester’s inability to use an overlap efficiently. The game didn’t really kick back into shape until the last quarter, when Gloucester, obviously aware that they could not rely on Paul's kicking decided to run every penalty searching for the winning try.

Intense pressure on the Bath line was to prove fruitless for Glaws due to some superhuman defence from the Bath boys, and a lack of direction in attack. 

The Gloucester faithful started to stream away 10 minutes from the end, and Kingsholm was a very quiet place for much of the game. Not surprising really as they lost their unbeaten home record to the team they most dearly didn’t want to. Full marks to Bath for pulling this one off, but with Fleck possibly seriously injured what is the cost?

Click on to the Glawster site for their

Gloucester
Jon Goodridge, Marcel Garvey, Robert Todd, Henry Paul, James Simpson-Daniel, Duncan McRae, Alex Page (68, Simon Amor) , Rodrigo Roncero (64, Nick Wood) , Chris Fortey, Andy Deacon (78, Adrian Olver) , Adam Eustace (64, Mark Cornwell) , Alex Brown, Jake Boer (c) , Peter Buxton, James Forrester

Bath
Matt Perry, Wylie Human, Andrew Higgins, Robbie Fleck (42, Robbie Kydd) , Jamie Williams (41, Paul Sampson) , Olly Barkley, Martyn Wood, David Flatman, Jonathan Humphreys (c) (52, Lee Mears) , Duncan Bell (64, Matt Stevens) , Steve Borthwick, Rob Fidler, Andy Beattie, Michael Lipman (82, James Scaysbrook) , Isaac Fea'unati,