An 85th-minute try from Anthony Watson and a touchline conversion by George Ford dramatically breathed some life into Bath’s sluggish season on a dank Sunday evening in Coventry. Wasps appeared to have edged to another potentially valuable European win in front of England’s new coach, Eddie Jones, until the game lurched away from them in the closing moments.
Wasps mostly had themselves to blame, having led 23-18 before losing two players to the sin-bin as they tried to hold out a desperate late surge from the visitors. Despite the scrums going uncontested, Bath kept their cool, moved the ball left and Watson took Tom Homer’s pass to score in the corner. Ford, who had previously missed an eminently kickable penalty from a much easier position, took careful aim and landed a conversion that may prove highly significant both collectively and personally.
It was an uplifting outcome in stark contrast to the fly-half’s unhappy game against Northampton the previous week and provided some much-needed respite for his father Mike, Bath’s head coach. “We took a lot of criticism last week but we’re keeping the faith,” said Ford Sr, crediting an “edgy” training session on Friday for getting his side in the right frame of mind. “Sometimes it just takes guts and heart and we showed that in bucketloads. In European terms it puts us in a good position if we can win our home games.”
His Wasps counterpart, Dai Young, was rather less thrilled, frustrated at a second successive home defeat and his team’s inability to cling on to their advantage. “The contact area wasn’t reffed at all until the last five minutes,” said Young, having seen Lorenzo Cittadini and George Smith sin-binned for cynically attempting to stop Bath’s momentum in the hectic closing minutes. “Bath didn’t play any rugby whatsoever but we played far too much. We should have been smarter and played the game in the right areas.”
Jones, either way, will have been suitably impressed by Ford’s nerve as well as Elliot Daly’s footwork as he sifts through his Six Nations options. Test trials are supposed to be a thing of the past but this was effectively the modern-day equivalent. While one game should not make or break careers, Jones does not have oodles of time in which to ponder the best players at his disposal.
For the likes of James Haskell, Joe Simpson, Jake Cooper-Woolley, Joe Launchbury, Kyle Eastmond, Jonathan Joseph, Semesa Rokoduguni and Dave Attwood these are also crucial days. It showed at times; the temptation to cling on to the ball and do something to titillate the watching Jones proved too hard to resist in one or two cases. Wasps were particularly wasteful in the first half, two avoidable turnovers yielding soft breakaway tries for Joseph and Matt Banahan when slightly more patience and composure would have paid greater dividends.
The irony will not have been lost on Jones that the more influential performers were mostly non-English qualified. The Australian needs no reminding of the qualities of the former Wallaby back-row Smith, while Charles Piutau and Francois Louw underlined their high-class status. Then there was Nathan Hughes, qualified to play for England on residency grounds from the end of next June and clearly a developing force within the game.
Bath’s collective defence was also noteworthy, with some desperate scrambling required to keep both Hughes and James Haskell from scoring close-range tries in the first half. Wasps, even so, still trailed by only 15-12 at the interval, Ruaridh Jackson having kicked three penalties and Daly nailing the sweetest of 50-metre penalties to keep his side in touch.
A further exchange of penalties maintained the pendulum theme before Jackson, with the opportunity to level the scores, slid a 40m effort wide from almost in front of the posts. It was the signal for the game to lift a notch in intensity, Launchbury creating some space for a Sailosi Tagicakibau surge down the left before Daly’s subtlety and pace gave Rob Miller just enough space to elude the covering David Denton and score in the corner.
It should have been enough, particularly after Ford’s penalty miss and a successful three-pointer from Jimmy Gopperth in the 75th minute which gave Wasps their five-point cushion after Bath’s front row, not for the first time, had creaked under pressure. Instead it was Bath, more clinical on the day if still a long way short of their fluent best, who had the final say, assisted by the merciless card-wielding of the French referee, Jérôme Garcès. Having beaten Leinster and Toulon in such glorious fashion, Wasps have now been abruptly dragged back to earth.
There will be other days and, hopefully, more atmospheric occasions. The modest attendance of 11,319 was considerably lower than Wasps have been used to, again suggesting that late Sunday tea-time kick-offs in mid-winter are rather less popular with travelling fans than their armchair cousins.
Wasps: Miller; Tagicakibau, Daly, Jacobs (Leeiua, 69), Piutau; Jackson (Gopperth, 60), Simpson (Robson, 72); Mullan (McIntyre, 68), Johnson, Cooper-Woolley (Cittadini, 49), Launchbury, Davies (Gaskell, 65), Haskell (capt), Smith, Hughes.
Try: Miller. Pens: Jackson 4, Daly, Gopperth. Sin-bin: Cittadini 80; Smith 80.
Bath: Watson; Rokoduguni, Joseph, Eastmond (Priestland, 73), Banahan (Homer, 66); Ford, Matawalu; Lahiff (Catt, 55), Batty (Webber, 55), Wilson (Thomas, h-t), Ellis (Houston, 60), Attwood, Garvey, Louw (capt), Denton.
Tries: Joseph, Banahan, Watson. Cons: Ford 2. Pens: Ford 2.
Referee: J Garcès (France). Att: 11,319.
