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Bath Disappoint Yet Again
By Glen Leat
March 3 2007
After Steve Meehan had publicly warned his team to pull their collective fingers out against Worcester, following a disappointing performance against Saracens last week, get ready for more critical words as Bath lost 21-15 at Sixways.

This was the first game Worcester had won at home this season, in fact for a whole 12 months, which says a lot about the Bath performance. This mainly international team demonstrated yet again that they are struggling to produce anything like coherent rugby and are fast becoming an embarrassment to the proud colours of Bath Rugby.

This was yet another disappointing excursion for the ever faithful travelling supporters of Bath as they watched their side maintain their unenviable away game losing streak. One has to question whether this team deserves such loyalty week in , week out. Potentially the most exciting part of the game for the visitors was when a home supporter won a car with his half-time competition kick at goal. Given the state of Barkley's kicking this afternoon perhaps we should have asked this bloke to take our kicks at goal?

Picture courtesy Empics

The opening try came after the strong Bath pack had been demolished in the first scrum of the game, giving a penalty to the home side. The catch and drive, following their penalty line-out saw the Worcester forwards get within a few yards of the Bath line before passing the ball to an overlapping Thinus Delport for his score. Drahm's conversion took the score to 7-0.

After over 10 minutes of apparent inactivity, during which time Andy Beattie and James Brown suffered head injuries, the closest the game to a score was a missed penalty attempt from Worcester. Just as everyone was drifting off to sleep Chris Malone charged down Shane Drahm's twenty-two clearance and chased the ball over the line to score. Olly Barkley converted his colleagues endeavour to make the score 7-7.

Picture courtesy Empics

With five minutes of the first half remaining Bath were penalised for being offside on their 10 metre line and Shane Drahm punished them with his kick through the middle of the posts. Bath then picked up their game and attacked the Worcester line in a series of waves only for David Barnes to drop the ball and snuff out their initiative. This appeared to give the home side an ideal opportunity to clear their lines but they then conceded a penalty in their red zone just moments before the break. Unfortunately for Bath, Olly Barkley sliced his kick to the left of the posts to keep the score at 10-7 to Worcester.

Ex-Bath favourite, Lee Best came on for the second half to replace James Brown who'd taken a knock to his head during the first half.

Picture courtesy Empics

Bath started the new half on the front foot and spent the first five minutes peppering Worcester's side of the pitch with attacking moves and eventually secured a penalty which saw Barkley level the match at 10-10. However Shane Draham regained the lead for his team with another penalty after 52 minutes. Another Drahm penalty, just a few minutes later, extended the home team's lead to six points and this was quickly followed by Shaun Berne replacing Chris Malone and Steve Meehan recognised the needed to make things happen.

With just seven minutes left on the clock Worcester appeared to have tied up the game with a second Delport try after Matt Powell had sucked in the Bath defence before popping the ball wide to his winger for the score. Shaun Berne repaid Meehan's faith in him by scoring a late try to make the score 21-15 but Barkley again missed his kick and the clock wound down to yet another disappointing Bath Rugby defeat..

 

Worcester 21 - 15
(10 - 7)
Bath
Tries:
Delport 2
  Tries:
Malone, Berne
Pens:
Drahm 3
  Pens:
Barkley
Cons:
Drahm
  Cons:
Barkley

 

Worcester Warriors: 15. Shane Drahm   14. 'Aisea Havili Kaufusi   13. Dale Rasmussen   12. Gary Trueman   11. Thinus Delport   10. James Brown   9. Matt Powell   1. Darren Morris   2. Chris Fortey   3. Tevita Taumoepeau   4. Craig Gillies   5. Phil Murphy   6. Drew Hickey   7. Pat Sanderson   8. Kai Horstmann  
Replacements: 16. Tony Windo   17. Aleki Lutui   18. Tim Collier   19. Tom Harding   20. Nick Runciman   21. Mark Tucker   22. Lee Best 

 

Bath Rugby: 15. Nick Abendanon   14. Joe Maddock   13. Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu   12. Olly Barkley   11. David Bory   10. Chris Malone   9. Nick Walshe   1. David Barnes   2. Lee Mears   3. Matt Stevens   4. Steve Borthwick   5. Danny Grewcock   6. Andy Beattie   7. Michael Lipman   8. Gareth Delve  
Replacements: 16. Pieter Dixon   17. Aaron Jarvis   18. Peter Short   19. James Scaysbrook   20. Chev Walker   21. Andy Williams   22. Shaun Berne 

Referee: Dave Pearson

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