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Four in a row against Bath

MOTM
By Leipziger October 22 2007
Sadly, that is not four wins in a row or any kind of positive statistic, what it means is that we have now lost at home against Bath or the fourth season in a row, and yet again against the West Country side yesterday saw a desperately poor performance in front of a small crowd of just over 5,500.

Any hopes of Kingston Park rocking for the second time in less than 24 hours were dispelled early by just how much room there was in the bar and in the stands, and there was little noise coming from the terraces (not that we had much to shout about) on a drab afternoon.

 

An early penalty by Shaun Berne put Bath ahead, before the centre waltzed through our midfield to score and convert the opening try too.  It was into the second ten minutes when the Falcons first really got out of their own half, and missed a golden overlap on the right wing.  Joe Shaw also missed a drop-goal attempt from in front of the posts.

 

Bath looked to have scored a try on the right when we just ran out of defenders, but the referee spotted an infringement and gave us a scrum, however Michael Claasens went over on the left and this time the TMO decided in favour of the team in white, putting the visitors 0-15 up, although the scoreboard tried to say 0-19 before settling on 0-0 for the rest of the afternoon.

 

Coming towards the end of the first half we began to make some inroads into the Bath 22, and Tim Visser chipped over the defence only for the ball to be hacked dead from the in-goal area, most likely off a defender but Bath won the drop-out.

 

Finally with just minutes of the first half left the breakthrough came, with a speedy attack in front of the line, Visser and Shaw going close before Tom May cut through a gap for our first points of the day, Matthew Burke converting to at least get the Falcons on the scoresheet in the first half.

 

After the break the Falcons took the game to Bath for the first ten minutes or so, putting a lot of pressure on and after an overlap on the left was wasted Burke scored a penalty to get us within five points of the visitors.  However just seconds later Bath wing Ian Davey was put in for their third try to pull the game away.

 

Burke kicked another penalty before he was taken off with a nasty-looking injury, and the coffin was nailed down with former Falcon Michael Stephenson beating May to the try line on the right to secure his side’s bonus point.  A drop goal by Ryan Davis rubbed salt in the wounds and a shell-shocked Kingston Park watched as Bath’s Matt Banahan scored a fifth with seven minutes to go.

 

There was time for Visser to put man of the match Joe Shaw in and get a second consolation try, Steve Jones converting.  Although a scoreline of 20-33 doesn’t suggest there was much to be consoled about, with Bath winning their second game at KP this year, still the only side to triumph here in 2007.

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