By Glen Leat
September 1 2002

“Come on Irish it’s only Bath you’re playing!” These words rang in my ears half way through the match at the Madejski Stadium and I was desperate this particular London Irish supporter would be made to eat his words – what a close call! After watching last years’ basement club, Leeds Tykes, beat last years’ runaway champions, Leicester Tigers, 26-13 on Saturday it was with some optimism that my band of travellers set off on a bright and sunny Sunday lunch-time for Reading for Bath’s opening fixture of the new season.

After suffering a summer of rugby gloom as I watched Bath fail to secure the services of several key players and injuries to some of our existing stars continued to plague the resources available to coach Michael Foley. It was not until I attended the Bath Rugby Supporters’ Club AGM on Friday and listened to the words of wisdom from Foley that I suddenly saw light at the end of what has been a very long and very dark tunnel.

This Aussie coaching coalition under the mighty management tutelage of the coach-meister himself, Jack Rowell, have a tremendous playing pedigree but what they bring to our club is Aussie nous, grit and commitment. There will be no room for slackers under this regime and the Bath players will be expected to give as much for the team cause in the eightieth minute as in the first. Foley wants to win because he is a proven winner himself and expects nothing less from those in his care.

So with the grand order of things upset on day one of the season at Leeds could this be the omen all Bath fans were looking for as they headed east for the match against London Irish?

Having never before been to this particular home of London Irish I was really taken with its common sense design and ease of vision for every spectator, I cannot believe there is a bad seat in the house. If Bath Rugby want to model their plans on something they will do well to design a scaled down version of this sporting palace.

The vagaries of buying tickets to away games from the home side usually means one does not sit in a block of away fans and this was no exception, I was completely surround by Irish fans. No problem and soon we were chatting about the laws of the game and how poor the Irish kicker Barry Everitt was throughout the game. It has to be said that had he slotted home all his kicks at goal Bath would not only have lost the game but would have failed to gain a bonus point.

But Bath did win the game, no thanks to referee Maybank, who managed to punish Bath some fifteen times with penalties, one of them being the most ludicrous penalty try I have seen in years. He awarded the try after just two infringements and didn’t appear to warn the Bath defenders that he would do this.

Bath do have a problem with penalties, they have done for years, and this is a key area that Foley and his coaches will have to work on in the coming weeks and months. However it is hard to be too cross today with a team that demonstrated passion, grit and determination for a full eighty-plus minutes.

New Bath skipper, Danny Grewcock, had a massive game today both in terms of his tackling and his leadership. The desire for victory was clear in his face and everyone in the Bath team followed suit.

Given that Bath were missing the likes of Borthwick, Lyle, Cooper, Catt, Tindall, Balshaw and Perry it was a tremendous feat for a group of mainly youngsters to hold London Irish for a full eighty minutes and come back from certain defeat when the opponents scored a drop goal in the 84th minute. Last year heads would have dropped and waited for the final whistle, after all they were Bath Rugby and used to losing.

But not this time, within seconds of the re-start Bath secured a penalty on the half-way line. Up stepped Olly Barkley, still just 20 years old and with a heap of criticism on his shoulders from last year’s poor campaign, to slot home the 40 metre kick to win the game – brilliant. At more than twice Barkley’s age all I could do was peer through my fingers as I held my breath; this boy’s got bottle and let’s not forget that when things do not go quite as well in the future!

The final whistle went within seconds of every Bath fan leaping to their feet to salute Barkley and the emotions last felt in Bordeaux in 1998 as Bath snatched the European Cup from Brive suddenly emerged. Tears welled up in my eyes as the Bath players went barmy on the field. In the stand I saw Steve Borthwick and Matt Perry cheering their comrades; this win mattered, it mattered a lot!

For now forget the next match against Saracens let’s just enjoy this victory, after losing the first four matches of the season last year and failing to gain an away win in the league this is something to be enjoyed.

As I sit basking in our win my mind conjures up a picture of a sad little Irish supporter trying to force a plateful of words in to his mouth. Hopefully next year he will shout, “Come on Irish try harder, this is the mighty Bath you are playing!”