Last season’s top two kicked off the season in opposition to last season’s bottom two. Bath duly completed the expected, joining Northampton with a bonus-point win to open their account. The team the Saints succeeded as champions last season travelled to the Stoop to remind Harlequins how much more they have to work on if they are to return to the sort of form that made them champions not so long ago.
The home team took to the field with a host of absentees, it is true. No Marcus Smith; no Alex Dombrandt; no George Furbank, a new signing with a shiny champion’s gong around his neck. They were bright as they always are, but the substance of their visitors was too much in the end, leavened by a flash of genius by the Argentinian Santi Carreras that will long stay with all who witnessed it.
To boast that sort of muscle, to boast that sort of genius, Bath will take some beating again this season. They had the bonus point by half-time, which felt a bit harsh on a Quins team that had enjoyed plenty of bright moments. Their challenge, it seems again, will be to find the composure to fill in the stretches of time between them with something substantial.
As it is, they flare up from time to time with a flash of brilliance. Bath have more in the way of relentless intensity. And Finn Russell, of course.
But of the two geniuses it has been Carreras turning heads of late, apparently playing in training as if he were, to quote his coach, the best player in the world. The cruellest turning point of the match was courtesy of a moment that might as well have been in training it was so casually, instinctively of another planet, might as well have been conjured by Maradona or Messi. The ledger read two tries apiece on the half-hour when Quins had just worked another of their sparks.
Tyrone Green was homing in on Carreras, the last man, with Oscar Beard outside him. Nothing wrong with the pass. But a dilemma for the last man in those circumstances is always whether to stick out a hand for the interception and risk a penalty try if it knocks on?
Extract — continue reading at the source.
