Bath and Leicester, two sides that have been knocking lumps off each other since well before the dawn of professional rugby, meet in next Saturday’s play-off after Bath ended their regular season with a frolic against another side who once caused them troubles.
Playing the kind of rugby that will not be on show next week, Bath ran in seven tries but also conceded four to a team that included eight players from the Gloucester academy in their match-day 23.
After Saturday’s final round in the Pro12 league, Gloucester will host Connacht next Sunday in an attempt to secure the 20th and final place in next season’s Champions Cup. Connacht got there despite losing at home to Ospreys and finished seventh in the league.
Victory in Sunday’s game would mean home advantage in the deciding play-off against a French challenger, probably Montpellier, but at Worcester not Kingsholm where a Madness concert is booked. Gloucester’s director of rugby, David Humphreys, was candid in saying before this game that those play-offs shaped selection that and the fact that Gloucester have three front runners serving suspension and more than a dozen out injured.
Bath’s pockets are deeper and Mike Ford only had to tinker with the side which beat Harlequins to guarantee a home semi-final. Nonetheless this was a West Country derby and while Humphreys called up eight from his academy he promised “whoever wears the Gloucester shirt this weekend, will go out 100% committed to producing a big performance”. Unfortunately commitment was not enough and Gloucester have now lost the last six of these local dust-ups.
Initially, before the adrenaline had time to wear off, it was Gloucester who took the lead, one of their debutants, No8 Lewis Ludlow just about getting to the line after an inside ball from the wing Steph Reynolds.
However reality was not far away and when the Bath scrum won a penalty and Matt Banahan and then Sam Burgess launched their considerable forms, gaps started to appear in the Gloucester defence and Kyle Eastmond ran through them to level the scores.
George Ford’s conversion gave Bath the lead on 11 minutes and they never lost it, the England fly-half adding the next seven points after Eastmond’s fast feet once again brought confusion to Gloucester ranks. Not that it was all one way. Rob Cook and Reynolds came close, but Bath had the nous and the weight.
Aled Thomas trimmed the lead to six points but Bath simply matched penalty with converted try, Burgess reaching out for the line and a lead of 21-8. Only when Bath over-elaborated or got cocky did they seem in danger as they did either side of half time when Steve McColl scored Gloucester’s second and third.
However, by then Ollie Devoto had added Bath’s ninth try bonus point of the season before Watson, Rokoduguni, and finally Agulla brought up the half century. “It won’t be like that next week,” Ford conceded.
