By The Analyst
September 8 2004

I was much taken by the look of our set defence on Saturday. We were pushing up exceptionally fast on the opposing 10 and flooding the area outside him, making an outside pass very risky. Malone is not the most mobile of players anyway, and was often in full rabbit/headlights mode.

It was interesting that we were often using our wings to tee off on the 10 channel, and given their fairly explosive speed and ample size, very formidable it was too. I don’t know if pests do this as a tactic, or whether it’s one up for Frank and Solly, but it seems a logical idea given the nature of the press defence. Some might say we didn’t lose a lot in kick defence either, by rotating our own 10 back into covering the blindside wing.

 

Also impressive was the volume of noise when we were in set defence, everyone shouting to each other and barking out their position etc; a fair bit of trash talk too, to confuse and intimidate the opponents- an old sarfie tactic which LI used to some effect.

 

Their centres took a lot of ball standing still, or at least only just before our defence arrived, and spilt an awful lot as a result. Oops – I mean they committed a lot of unforced errors, purely by coincidence when our players happened to be running towards them .I felt that within about 10 minutes there was panic in the Bath midfield ; several of them had rabbit-ears and were distracted by the patter of size 12 footsteps.

 

The scrum and lineout defence was also well organized. I don’t know Fe’anuti’s carrying statistics last year in terms of number of carries and yards per carry, but I would guess they were badly down on Saturday. I don’t remember any particular occasion when he had a favourable anti- clockwise wheel to allow him to launch himself at our midfield, and credit to our pack for that. Likewise, they managed to drive their lineout possession very little in comparison to last year; hardly at all when Leroy was on the pitch.

 

In general, our defensive re-alignment at the breakdown was also excellent; the communication and the level of concentration on a hot noisy day was a credit to players and coaches alike. The contrast with Bath was astonishing , as both Wyllie’s and Rhino’s tries stemmed from a player being committed to the breakdown and no-one then rotating  to scrum half or blindside wing (as the case may be) .

 

But I reckon that there are going to be some pretty savage sessions on kick pursuit and tackling in open play this week. I really do hope the squad are deeply ashamed about that and determined to improve on Saturday’s performance. How did I miss the anointment of young Crockett as the new Gerald Davies at half time, I wonder? Has any team made him look better on the counter than we did? Absolutely shameful, and after Solly has let them enjoy the win, serious work must be done. It would be extremely galling to have Harlequins proceed to run four tries back at us next week, but they’re the sort of side who could do that to you. We also need to improve our own lineouts, as well as trying to exert some pressure on opposition ball. To be fair, with three of Grewcock, Borthwick , Fidler and Beattie, Bath are well ahead of anyone bar Tigs in this phase ; Harlequins should be more a question of how much ball Basil  can poach, rather than being in a panic about winning our own ball.

 

A shame, really, about the last bit, as my cup was close to half full for a minute, just then …