Nobody really knows what to make of the orgy of tries that is English rugby these days. The dazzling hands, the scarcely believable comebacks, the, er, bewildered defences. Evidence of a new dimension of attacking rugby, uncontainable and breathless?
Bath have found themselves of late at the heart of the debate – here they were reminded what rugby feels like when served up in more old-fashioned style, hard and brutal. Montpellier turned up to a sold-out Rec on the opening weekend of the Champions Cup and won 32-14. Bath fell away alarmingly, losing the second half 22-0.
Montpellier are a formidable team indeed. They were beaten finalists in the Top 14 last season, the same season in which they succeeded Bath as champions of the Challenge Cup, the Champions Cup’s junior event. It is traditional in the first weekend of this event to jump to wild conclusions about the respective states of the game in Europe’s prime rugby nations.
We shall try to refrain from that here, but if English rugby was to jump to any conclusions about the efficacy of their version of jouez, jouez as currently peddled in the Prem, Montpellier, currently in modest mid-table of the French league, shrugged their hefty shoulders and played one of England’s finest off their own park every which way. They did that with tries one and two of their four, although it was their break-out midway through the second half that best epitomised that famous French flair and set up not another try, but that almost-unheard-of phenomenon in English rugby, the penalty kick at goal, Montpellier’s second of the match. This was real, old-fashioned rugby, all right.
Adam Hastings landed one penalty in the first half, to keep Montpellier within four points at the break. That second penalty, just shy of the hour, extended the visitors’ lead to the same margin. They never relinquished it.
Bath played plenty of rugby, but wave after wave of it dashed against the rocks of those hard shoulders. Bath’s indiscipline was a feature throughout, sometimes hammered at the breakdown – where Alex Bécognée and Lyam Akrab in particular were ruthless – at other times painfully loose as they tried to clear out their opponents in similar fashion. The three games Bath have played in the Prem this season have yielded 243 points.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
