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Bath send message to Premiership with statement win over champions

By PA
Tom Pearson/ PA

Bath turned the tables on Gallagher Premiership champions Northampton as they opened their league campaign with a 38-16 victory at the Recreation Ground.

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Three months after losing narrowly to Saints in the final, Johann van Graan’s team produced an impressive display on opening night.

And they triumphed in bonus-point fashion as tries from wing Joe Cokanasiga, flanker Ted Hill, scrum-half Ben Spencer, centre Ollie Lawrence and replacement Jaco Coetzee saw them home.

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Fly-half Finn Russell kicked five conversions and a penalty, while Northampton could have few complaints about the outcome.

Flanker Josh Kemeny touched down on his Premiership debut for Saints, while Fin Smith booted a conversion and three penalties, yet they never seriously threatened to leave the west country with maximum points.

Match Summary

1
Penalty Goals
3
5
Tries
1
5
Conversions
1
0
Drop Goals
0
97
Carries
106
5
Line Breaks
5
17
Turnovers Lost
11
6
Turnovers Won
5

Northampton missed the sniping presence of injured England scrum-half Alex Mitchell and, although Smith provided moments of flair and creativity, Bath always enjoyed an element of control.

England head coach Steve Borthwick looked on as Bath dominated initial territory and possession – Saints did not help themselves by conceding three quickfire penalties – before taking a sixth-minute lead.

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The Bath forwards drove a lineout deep into Northampton’s 22, then quickly recycled ball enabled an overlap to be worked and Cokanasiga finished impressively.

Russell converted from the touchline, but his opposite number Smith drifted a short-range penalty chance wide before Russell failed to find the target from 35 metres.

Northampton hit back in style midway through the first half, carving Bath’s defence open through some slick handling at pace.

Centre Fraser Dingwall was the architect, sending captain George Furbank through a gap 25 metres out, and Kemeny applied the finish on his Saints debut.

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Smith converted, but Saints were then stunned by a spectacular Bath score from distance.

Centre Will Butt made an outstanding break, found Spencer in support and his superbly-timed pass allowed Hill an unopposed run to the line, with Russell’s conversion making it 14-7.

Smith kicked a penalty, but Bath struck again five minutes before the interval, charging forward from a lineout, and Spencer exploited some weak Northampton defensive work to claim his team’s third touchdown, again converted by Russell.

Northampton needed to make inroads after the break and they went close just eight minutes in, but wing James Ramm saw possession squirm away from his grasp as he tried to collect Smith’s cross-kick.

Smith cut the gap through a 54th-minute penalty and landed a three-pointer shortly afterwards to set up an intriguing final quarter.

Bath then reasserted themselves in the game, with debutant flanker Guy Pepper making a crunching tackle on Furbank, who spilled possession and Lawrence broke clear to score.

Russell landed a fourth successful conversion and Saints again had it all to do, trailing by 12 points.

A Russell penalty took Bath further in front, with his long-range effort killing off any chance of a late Saints revival, and Kemeny collected a late yellow card.

There was still time for Bath to add further gloss after Kemeny’s departure, with powerful close-range work by the pack rewarded when Coetzee touched down to complete a convincing evening.

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Comments

1 Comment
S
Steve P 92 days ago

What a great game. Bath looked impressive, and Spencer is going to challenge for the England 9 jersey based on that performance.

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J
JW 1 hour ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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