Bath Out Bath'd At Kingsholm
For me this was a genuine ‘must win’ game for Glaws. B***, who Stuart Barnes keeps  telling us are the best team in England, Europe, and probably the known universe, had two games in hand, and had we lost, then a top two spot looked to be a challenge.
In the end we won, and we won well, outscoring them in tries, and sending them home with nothing – that’s three wins on the bounce against them and you have to wonder when the pundits might just come to the conclusion that we’re the better side.
There wasn’t a bad performance from Glaws, but for me the pack was what did it for us. For too long one of our weaknesses against B*** has been that their nasty, big pack of forwards has beaten us up, and this time it just didn’t happen. From the first scrum we had the edge and, with our line-out functioning OK too, that was the bedrock on which the victory was built.
The front row was magnificent: Olly, as usual, never took a backward step, and Wood and Somerville were excellent – after the game the former AB gave a damned good impression of being a man who is very happy at Glaws. The second row functioned well, and the back row was wonderful with Satala making lots of yards, Haze diving headfirst into places where no sane man would go (probably the definition of a good 7!) and Delve a force of nature at the back of the scrum. 
Rightly we were on the coaches’ cases about some of the forward displays earlier in the season, but that’s several games on the bounce where they’ve done the business. Everyone will have their explanations for the improvement, and mine is Somerville and Delve – maturity, attitude and power.
Dean Ryan took one hell of a chance starting without a top-class goal-kicker in the side and with two non-kicking centres – I thought it was a recipe for trouble, and possibly even disaster, but I’m delighted to admit that I was totally wrong. As he always does, he said that he’d picked the team specifically for this game, and he got it spot on – we simply out-Bath’d B***. They have a fast, off-loading game, well we have a better one: they have a pack that is competitive at the breakdown, well so do we.
At half-back we had King Carlos and Rory Lawson and it worked a treat. Before the game there was a much longer than usual session by Redpath and Lawson which was focused almost entirely on long passes, and the service from the 9 in the match was much, much better than in the previous two games – thankfully there wasn’t much of the dreaded box-kicking either, apart from the charged down one that led to the first try.
Defensively Lawson was excellent – one tackle on Banahan near the end was right in front of us and I feared for the Scot’s health such was the ferocity of the hit, but up he bounced and got a good pass away from the ruck.
 I thought that Spencer, especially in the first half was excellent. His passes are as good as Ryan Lamb’s (and that’s saying something), and his reading of the game is outstanding: there was one instance where he took the ball and clearly thought about passing left, but suddenly went right and took it into contact – some would have seen it as indecision, but from our seats it looked like exactly the right decision made in a fraction of a second.
His kicking from hand was excellent two as he has an eye for spotting the space on the pitch, and he has a pretty powerful boot on him. I won’t condemn him for missing place kicks as he isn’t a front-line kicker, and it isn’t his fault he was asked to take on the role.
I was fearful about the non-kicking centre partnership but it didn’t seem to matter, and besides, Allen put in one wonderful 40 metre clearance – I wonder where he’s been hiding that talent? In this game, with a plan that said run everything, against an opposition with the same mindset, it worked really well – on a wet day against a less adventurous side it might be different, but we’ll trust DR to work that one out. Sharples repaid DR’s confidence in him and showed good strength to take his try – he also showed a willingness to get stuck in at the ruck, and he looked to have a maturity and confidence beyond his youthful age. Balshaw, thankfully, put his poor Quins game behind him and was his old self, showing great vision and taking on the role of organising the defensive line.
Olly Morgan was magnificent. One of his takes off his own kick was as good as I’ve ever seen from a 15 and if Glaws had kept their heads deserved to lead to a try. It’s his bad luck that Armitage is playing well for England, but their loss is our gain, and his time will surely come.
Overall, despite the defensive lapses from both teams – you don’t get seven tries without something failing – this was a great game to watch, and in part that’s down to Wayne Barnes. He didn’t have one of his best games – I think he was let down badly by the Assistant Refs on a number of occasion – but, like Spreadbury he kept the game flowing, and a few yellow cards is no bad thing. I’d rather his and Pearson’s style than Chris White who seems to allow almost anything to pass with just a stern word.
Finally, what of Dean Ryan? After all of the disquiet earlier in the season, we’re at the top of the table, playing much better and looking good, touch wood, for a top two spot. The thing that irritated me most earlier in the year was the repeated claim that there was dissent in the ranks and that he’d lost the confidence of the players.
I never bought that, as even when we were playing badly, I couldn’t fault the attitude of the team. Delve, after the match, made a lot of the excellent spirit within the club, and I prefer to believe him rather than the armchair critics who heard a word from a friend of their sister’s second cousin’s fiancee’s hairdresser’s dad. |
