Moving To The Dark Side
By fatlad76
January 9 2023
I am going to start off with a moan. The Premiership cup has caused a few dilemmas with the demise of Worcester and Wasps and the mismatch of games played and finding games to play to even out the leagues. We were sitting in a good place with maximum points but needed one more fixture to balance out the league. The compromise that was drawn up was good giving 4 sides the extra game leaving and Exeter getting a result against Worcester. This meant we were to play Bath at home, a side who had nothing to play for. Now here is the gripe. It was always going to be mid week but is partly there to make up lost revenue at difficult times. So when picking the date why was 4th Jan chosen? It was already known at the time there would be rail strikes! The other extra game is not for two weeks so it is not down to the premiership requiring to get the games done. Ridiculous and a loss of an opportunity to garner extra income.
So on to the game. Since it was know that it would be a reduced attendance only one stand was open. The South. Now my heritage is as an Easty at the MadStad and when moving to Brentford we wanted to mimic the same by being close to the half way line and chose blindly to get a season ticket in the North stand. Love the position and very similar to where we were originally.
This game meant a journey to the dark side!
The club took the opportunity to do some marketing and put season ticket holders in the hospitality sections so we were in the 1898 club. First impressions were quite good! Long bar and slightly different set of food options. However I am not sure how this differs to normal but the pie was not my usual chicken balti and worse than that not available! Not a good start but at least my post Christmas “diet” Guinness was in a better class of plastic cup. It was also nice being in a warm place pre match. Hold on was that “Sooty” who just walked passed?
Moving outside, the seats were higher than our normal seats and definitely felt further away from the pitch. However the seats were wider and padded. Very comfortable! As we moved towards the start the seats six rows in front started to fill up : OHC, Arundell, White, Willemse ….. the whole squad!
To the game, I see we have Sara Cox reffing and no TMO. We joked that the TMO was probably our friendly Italian ref and he was doing it from home without a tv screen! I think the last time she reffed us at the MadStad she was very good but I will stand corrected if I have misremembered.
The game starts and very quickly a big offside is spotted by the Bath 8. I call it out and 5 seconds later the whistle goes and back we come. A wonky throw is also called and once again moments later Sara goes back for it. This is good and probably a result of moving to the dark side. Jedi mind control was working on the ref!
I was optimistic for the game since this side had been very good in the cup so far and had played some good free flowing rugby. The first 20 was very scrappy and we kept making silly mistakes. It was good to see Cornish back but his arrows would not have graced any match at Allie Pally!
Eventually Cornish goes over from a driving maul and we are on the way. Another bit of forwards play saw Scragg go over for the second but we didn’t have the zip from the back of the ruck and the push from the back line. There was no side to side flowing rugby from the backs. However at half time we were half way there. It was only marred by the injury to Trotter. It looked bad and wish him a speedy recovery. At half time I asked Sooty what he thought and his summary was good but bitty. I will comment that the defence was very good and Bath really didnt threaten outside of the first five minutes and I don’t remember us giving away a single penalty.
I also bumped into Kyle Rowe and asked him how he was doing. Said he was over the worst but only doing light work so hopefully back in March (e.g. Next season!).
The second half was much of the same but Bath more in it but still our defence was outstanding. Cornish got his brace and Miller the fourth and important try. We are now home all the way!
It would have been nice to nil them but we took the foot off the pedal in the last two minutes and the game ended with their only score.
Not a great game but we had done exactly what was required. Positives was the defence. Jacob Atkins was given MOM on his 50th appearance. I thought he played really well and his fast wrap around throughout the game allowed many no look passes. However it a bit of a shock that it is only 50 since I believe he is now our longest serving player. Not quite made the break through but has looked good this year.
Finally, did we enjoy the dark side experience? It was good to be in the warm, have padded seats, mix with the players …. But would I fall for the marketing ploy? No much prefer slumming it in the North stand.
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Cheers
