By Robbie Richmond
September 19 2006

A lovely day for rugby, not too much wind in the air (only when Olly Barkley was preparing to kick) the weather pleasantly clement and a near full house to enjoy the most one sided battering this author has seen for quite a while

 

Saints Scottish selection show slow-witted southwestern shower superb style

 

By Robbie Richmond

 

Bath once again hightailed it down the M4 with their tails between their legs as Zak Feau’nati and his posse of low grade thugs, mutli-thumbed reprobates, nefarious shysters and imitation rugby players  left Franklin’s Gardens with no points and their reputation as “one of the best packs in the history of the game ever, ever, ever,” in absolute ruins.

A lovely day for rugby, not too much wind in the air (only when Olly Barkley was preparing to kick) the weather pleasantly clement and a near full house to enjoy the most one sided battering this author has seen for quite a while. The final score doesn’t really do Saints justice, this was a game that were it not for some peculiar refereeing of the scrummage, and one or two passes not going to hand could of easily have transformed this game into a 40 or even 50 point spanking.

 

Baths visit to FG once again brought them doom, misery and no points as the Saints Scottish contingent showed a thoroughly lackluster Bath side any hope at all. (That one’s for you Coochie, Nohopeton eh? Think again my old cocker!) Acting Bath Head Coach Steve Meehan, having decided to field a team with three fly halves in the centre of his midfield, saw them feel the brunt of some spectacular and unforgiving possession play from Los alongside Big Quins and “BRUCE!” which helped to establish Saints as the dominating power in this battle.

 

Unfortunately it would seem that the good work done by Brian Ashton over the course of most of last season has gone to waste as Bath reverted to type under the days of Knuckles and Foley, a dull dirge of a game, driving big men around the sides of the fringes of rucks and the return of the rolling maul. (Pay attention Sarries, you might learn something) The typical bully boy tactics which have been so pre-eminent amongst other teams in the Guinness Premiership when facing Northampton over the past few years simply will not do anymore as Slugga Sloane and Grayse have galvanized a collection of young and occasionally naïve players into a group of warriors with a Tiananmen Square spirit and a massive will to win.

 

So it came as no surprise to me to see Saints not only win, win well, and in an entertaining fashion which become our way, garner 5 points from a game which many Saints fans seemed to feel was perhaps beyond our grasp before 1:30 yesterday afternoon.

 

 

So, to the game…

 

 

With capitulation no longer being in a Saintly dictionary (they’ve also left gullible out of this year’s addition as well Louisa (wink wink)) the forwards looked to take the battle to the gargantuan Bath pack straight from the off. So long as they can catch the ball from the kick off. I know this is the start of the review, but the kick off does seem to be a major issue in need of some work. Sooner or later, someone will attack us here and get an easy 7 pointer; I can see it coming…

 

With Bath looking as usual to carry with the big men and then allow the “so laid back he’s asleep” Molly Malone to punt to the corner, Saints had no trouble at all with contending with Baths’ ridiculously one dimensional and terribly old school tactics. The recent form of Foxy has been superb to say the least. With Bath operating a style of sideways driving and short options off the back of a maul are meat and drink to both him and the Toopsmeister, and both them alongside our hard working front five had their fill all day. Whilst defensively Saints have looked a little hot and cold early on this season, Baths’ constant ability to find contact helped the saints to take control frequently at the breakdown as gang tackles led to double jackals and ball so slow Andy Williams was left with few options other than Malone in the pocket, good job that’s pretty much where he lives isn’t it?

 

Picture Courtesy EMPICS/Sportnetwork

However Malone’s normally exocet boot was rather off target and as one went straight into touch on the full it gave Wally Thompson and Christian Short the opportunity to take advantage of the missing Steve Borthwick, who so often has made poor old Wally look a numpty in a Saints shirt whilst making him look pretty darn good in an England one from time to time….

 

Saints won the line and played the ball into midfield where after a trademark Quins crash ball Bath were found guilty of  coming in off their feet and “BRUCE!” did the deed with his improving boot. 3 – Zip to the good guys!

 

From the kick off we saw a return to physicality immediately and throughout the early stages of the first half the machismo stand-off between the packs swayed back and forth as Bath tried unleash their back row of number 8’s into the waiting arms of Big Quins. From a breakdown on the left of the 22, (my left may have been your right, depends where you were sat ‘spose) Bath were given a penalty, and Barkley did the honors.

3-3 after 8 mins or so…

 

Once again both sides fought hard for dominance at the breakdown and foraged hard for turnovers wherever possible, once again though the depth of each teams’ ambition with ball in hand was clear for all to see, Los looked for runners and gaps frequently, as well as controlling the game well with some improved punts to touch, while Malone looked to punt for distance and field position, it only served as good counter attack ball for two of Scotland’s finest, especially as Bath seemed unwilling to chase most of these kicks. I wondered if they’d left their legs on the coach, either that or Cliff and Tim had put iron fillings in the Powerade!

 

With Gareth Delve leaving the field for treatment and the young, talented but invariably inexperienced Chris Goodman (keep an eye on him by the way) coming on to replace him Los saw a chance to strike and strike down his channel off a scrum he did thanks to some good work from Dan Browne and Monty alongside Sharky down the right hand wing, leading to a desperate pile up of bodies and a big white shirted gent of no discernable number coming in from the side of the ruck/mass of bodies. Another penalty to Saints was converted by “BRUCE!”

 

Picture Courtesy EMPICS/Sportnetwork

Referee Barnes (more of him later) then found his patience tested to the core from the restart as within 4 phases of the return to play he found himself with little option than to make an example of Captain Zak who was made to walk the plank for a 10 minute breather. Saints had found an edge, now was the time to squeeze the mango of try line joy and enjoy all the sweet juice it had to offer.

 

Zak’s pleasant freebee was chipped deep into the corner and off to work the pack did go! And with a shovel and a spade Bath dug in as deep as possible but sadly it wasn’t enough as mightiest mouse of them all, the legendary Wee Tam had a little burrow over from 5 metres thanks to some good work from the new Wally/Duracell lineout axis.

 

With “BRUCE!” narrowly missing the conversion the scores on the boards were now:

 

14-3 to Saints, 25 minutes gone and all the play going one way…

 

With Bruce’s boys firmly in the ascendency the game swayed further in  the direction of the Jimmies as Bath looked to be decidedly “off the boil” after last week’s destruction of the Tigers. It didn’t take the Green Black and Gold juggernaut to make further use of the possession they were readily enjoying. Even the return to the pitch of Captain Zak could do little to quell the storm and Bath’s ship looked to be sinking quicker than Coochie coos air miles.

 

From a set scrum a delightful blindside move came to fruition as Sharky careered down towards the 22 before delightfully releasing Robbie Kidd, (whose guile and finesse were a delight to behold throughout the afternoon) who sidestepped his way through oncoming heavy goods vehicles (I can only imagine he was terribly good at “frogger” on the ZX Spectrum way back in the day) and unfurled a beautiful reverse hand flip, (which you may recall Chris Mayor had found too difficult to counter last week at Edgeley Park) to Monty who delighted the crowd by going over for a first rate try.

Bruce was successful with the kick and made the score 21-3 with nowt but a few minutes until the halftime oranges.

 

However, the Saints charitable streak is known throughout the world and what kind of host would we be if we didn’t offer Bath some form of way back into the game?

 

Yeah, some things don’t change do they? From the resulting kick off the ball was dropped under pressure and a turnover to Bath afforded Malone to catch the saints napping with a cross field kick.

The kick took a rather spectacular bounce and the defenders misjudged the direction of the ball and Captain Zak was able to palm the ball into the arms of Andy Higgins, who thinking all his Christmas’ had come at once scampered over the line headed to the posts and celebrated as if he’d just one the 100 meters gold at the Olympics. Calm down dear boy, you’re a walking, talking ulcer as it is!

 

It was a soft try, Bath didn’t really deserve it either, and they had been let right back into the game. Barkley converted to make it 21-10 at half time. Saints had been bar far the better team, scrummaging Bath off the park, though that only seemed to occur when Barnes would allow it. I’ve been present to watch Barnes referee the Saints and I have to say this was probably his best performance. That still doesn’t help to hide the fact that at scrum time he completely loses the plot, panics and gives a free kick to the team who appear to be grunting less. Last year Barnes allowed lineouts to be a free for all, closing the gap, elbows everywhere, delay the put it as long as you like. This year as with last year his panic grips him with fear and before you know it he’s off with his hand movements like some demented Madonna backing dancer. Seriously, something has to be done about him; sooner or later someone’s going to get injured badly because he’s struggling to impose himself on the game at scrum time. Let’s face it - heaven forbid it should happen - but that’s a nasty lawsuit to be handed to a referee….

 

Second half

 

 

Bath started the second half quite well, put some phases of play together and were able to win a kickable penalty, which Barkley dully did. 21-13. Saints gained some parity on the field once more and they were awarded another penalty as Bath persisted in not rolling away from the tackle. Once more to the ref, if it’s going on all day, and you didn’t have to especially good eyesight to see it from D block, why does it take Barnes until the final minutes of the game to make an example of Danny Grewcock to be sent to the sin bin?  Speaking sin bins how both Grewcock and Thompson stayed out of the bin after their little ding dong is quite a mystery, with both players fighting to turnover ball at a bottom of a ruck, play moved on up field whilst Wally was accosted by Grewcock and a few of his pals whilst still on his back and it was Foxy of all people who came to Wally’s aid and broke up the punch up. Now who’d have thought that of Air foxy this time last year eh?

 

But I digress…

Bruce’s penalty shaved the bottom of the posts; to be fair given his previous record it was a tremendous effort. So too was the break made by Los a few moments later found the time and space to break out as he dazzled Duncan Bell with his fancy foot work the plodding prop could only stand by and admire. Los wasn’t finished there as he floated in and then out of Andy Higgins, who was once again powerless to resist the skills and talent Los was oozing, as he broke into the 22 he was able to fire of a lovely pass to Robbie Kydd who ambled over nicely and put any thoughts Bath had of getting back into the game on the back burner. Bruce missed the conversion and the score became 26-13.

 

After the usual glut of substitutions around the 50 minute mark came some truly awesome defense from the green black and gold. Seriously, we’re talking the gold standard of defence here, pounding away at the line outs, driving around the sides of the mauls, they even tried to spread it wide once or twice. No joy, nope, none, nada, Zippo, zilch. Yet still they pounded away like Richard I on the walls of Jerusalem. Ok so Richard got there in the end, but hey we’ve only got 80 minutes not a couple of years! Then, as once more the Bath pack tried on their bully boy techniques Malone took the opportunity to try a cross field kick. High up into the air it floated and over toward the left hand corner with Joe Maddock charging through onto the ball as it plopped into the in goal area. With Monty and Sharky desperately trying to cover back Maddock had time to look at it, stutter a bit, go for the ball miss it, try again, miss it, get hit by Monty and finally blow it. Cor, I’ve never seen anything like it. It was actually harder not to score than just fall over the line with the ball. It was just laughable, like something out of Fawlty Towers.

 

Barnes decided that Maddock has knocked on, although you can only imagine that Maddock would rather have been given the yellow card instead. Scrum down, and then into touch. Once more the Bath pack tried to pick and go from a drive at the line out and then som thing magical happened; a true, true Kodak moment. I hope to god someone got a photo as Christian Short came up with a beaut of a steal in the line out. Oh, it was a long time coming but sweet Child O’ Mine it wasn’t half good. And from there Saints were almost home.

 

 

Bath had become decidedly desperate. Up went a Garryowen from Barkley in an attempt to put pressure on Luke Myring who had recently come on to replace Kyddo at full back. Luck was on Luke’s side as he tapped it back and the ball was spread wide to Danny boy who sprayed the ball wide to Ben who shipped it on to “BRUCE!” who put on the after burners and exploded down the line and into the 22, evading the cover tackles, he floated the ball inside (ON HIS LEFT HAND EIFION!!!) to Los who went in under the post. That’s that then, the straw that broke the camel’s back. Bruce made light work of the conversion and the score board read 33-13. Bonus point! Nice!!!

 

As the game finished and died away Saints made a few more subs and Bath played for pride, Michael Stephenson scored a nice try in the corner, again though it took close to 20 phases on the line to get there. Fair play to Bath they never gave up but they were so unbelievably one dimensional in the way they played. At this level, the highest level, it’s simply daft to the point of arrogance not to have a back-up plan. Bath lacked leadership and nous, normally employed by their skipper Borthwick who was a big loss to them today.

 

Overall, saints performance was pretty much without fault, if we’re going to be hyper, hyper picky you would have to say we haven’t done ourselves justice in the score line. There were plenty of opportunities to score more often than we did but it certainly isn’t going to be every week that we play a team so easy to read and easy to play…

 

Northampton Saints –

Kydd (Myring 68mins)

Lamont

Reihana (Capt.)

Quinlan

Cohen

Spencer

Robinson

Smith,

Thompson (Richmond 53mins)

Barnard (Budgen 75mins)

Lord,

Short (Damien Browne 75mins)

Tupai (Lewitt 70mins)

Fox

Daniel Browne (Easter 68mins)

Bath –

Abendanon

Higgins (Stephenson 55mins)

Berne

Barkley (Davies 70mins)

Maddock

Malone

Williams (Walshe 40mins)

Barnes (Flatman 51mins)

Mears (Hawkins 70mins)

Bell

Fidler (Faamatuainu 70mins)

Grewcock

Short

Delve (Goodman 16mins)

Feaunati (Capt.).

Scorers:
Northampton Saints - Tries: Smith, Lamont, Kydd, Spencer; Cons: Reihana (2); Pens: Reihana (3).

Bath - Tries: Higgins, Stephenson; Con: Barkley; Pens: Barkley (2).

Yellow card:
Feaunati (20mins)
Grewcock (80mins)

Travis Perkins man of the match- Robbie Kydd

Robbie Richmond’s real man of the match without all the political mucking about-  Darren Fox

Attendance
13,186