Things are looking up for English rugby, but if Friday night’s pyrotechnics at Gloucester maintained the positive vibes, here was a damp reversion to less inspiring times. Not that Todd Blackadder, he of All Black pedigree, will mind. The Kiwi charged with turning round Bath’s fortunes has successfully opened his campaign without any sign – or even the slightest hint – of the All Black way, nor of the Fijian that we might have expected his incoming assistant Tabai Matson to introduce.
All of that can wait for another day. Instead, Bath made do with a patient defence and the precision of the son of Blackadder’s predecessor. George Ford is an integral part of England’s new optimism, but in the Franklin’s Gardens drizzle he needed no more to win the match than a display of accuracy that has not always been his trademark.
With his father, Mike, gone, Ford responded with all of Bath’s 18 points. Certainly it was a lesson for his even younger opponent, Harry Mallinder, son of Northampton’s director of rugby, Jim, to ingest.
“I’m just impressed with him as a young man,” said Blackadder of the fly-half he has made vice-captain. “He’s got great character and showed out there that he can put all the distractions aside and get on with his rugby.”
It would be churlish in the extreme to lay blame for Northampton’s latest undoing at the feet of Mallinder Jnr, but the deterioration of his fortunes after a bright start was symbolic, at least, of what must go down as a horrible showing from the home side. Last season was a prolonged disappointment; this season has begun in the same vein.
They come away with the meagre comfort of a couple of tries and a resultant bonus point, but they were registered in the last seven minutes, after what seemed an age of toil. And they were trailing 18-0 before they scored the first of them. After Friday night, no comeback should seem too outlandish, but this one came too late to convince even the most excitable of us.
Nic Groom, the South African recruit, claimed both tries in a 15-minute cameo off the bench, which will provide food for thought for Northampton’s selection committee, both scored from close range in the absence of his opposite number, whom he’d just coaxed into a yellow-card offence with a tapped penalty. That those 14 late points in the space of five minutes were not enough to clinch more than a bonus point will hurt, all the more so when in the opening 20 minutes the Saints had shown enough spark to expect at least some points to accrue.
Luther Burrell, on his 100th appearance, was one of a few hefty customers to punch holes through the Bath midfield; Louis Picamoles, Northampton’s biggest signing, crashed to within a few yards; and Mallinder ran straight over the top of Ford. At that point, after a couple of astute kicks for position, he looked the coming man every bit as much as he had at the end of last season, albeit as a full-back cum centre.
But from there Ford assumed the role of teacher, not least in the art of accumulating points. Four penalties and two drop goals reflected well against the two penalties Mallinder missed in the first half, the second a straightforward proposition just before half-time.
How Northampton needed that latter effort to find its target, after Ford’s quick-fire penalty and drop goal had just given Bath a 6-0 lead they had scarcely moved out of second gear to secure. What’s more, Bath had lost their own star No8 of a signing, Taulupe Faletau, with a knee injury after a mere 12 minutes.
In the second half, the demons crowded round the home team, just as much as they seemed to be circling their precocious fly-half. Passes went to ground and kicks to nowhere in particular. The more the situation demanded something be done, the less seemed to work, and the easier it was for Bath, and Ford in particular, to add a little brick to the lead. Bath’s scrum grew to dominate too. And suddenly the scoreboard read 18-0 with 10 minutes to go.
What followed will give Northampton some encouragement, academic though it may have been. The lesson by then had already been delivered by one son of a director of rugby to another.
