Biarritz battle will start cup campaign
FORMER Bath Chronicle rugby writer MIKE TREMLETT has been combatting COVID-19 lockdown by delving into his personal scrapbook of Rec memories. Here, he recalls two stories from around a decade ago.
After signing for Gloucester after a highly successful spell with Wasps, former Bath winger Tom Voyce was looking forward to his Cherry and White debut against Bath at Kingsholm on the opening day of the 2009/10 Premiership campaign, a game Gloucester won 24-5...
FORMER Bath, Wasps and England wing Tom Voyce is ready to shoulder what he believes is the massive responsibility which goes with being a senior figure in Brian Redpath’s new-look Gloucester squad.
And he is clearly excited about the prospect of being thrown in at the deep end when Gloucester take on their arch-rivals Bath at Kingsholm on the opening day of the new Guinness Premiership campaign.
Now 28, Voyce parted company with Wasps at the end of last season after making 176 appearances and scoring 280 points to help the London outfit win seven trophies in six seasons.
This season the Truro-born flier is settling quickly at Kingsholm and he believes the challenge facing him over the next nine months is to help Gloucester shed their tag as the Premiership’s ‘Nearly Men.’
“I’ve come here looking for a new challenge after being part of a hugely successful spell for Wasps, knowing that a new phase of my career has started and that means I have to prove myself to the supporters and my new teammates,” said Voyce.
While former Bath clubmate Mike Tindall has won the biggest player’s prize of all - a World Cup medal, Voyce, capped nine times by England to date, has been a consistent winner at club level on the domestic and Heineken Cup stage.
And Redpath has made it clear that he expects Voyce to draw on his experience at Wasps and be a major influence on and off the pitch, helping to create a winning mentality at Kingsholm.
“That, undoubtedly, adds to the pressure on me here at a club which has gone so close to winning trophies in the past and not quite made it yet,” admitted Voyce.
“Hopefully, because I’ve been through it before at Wasps, what I learned there will give me the experience to make a contribution which will help Gloucester take that final step over the next couple of seasons.
“I haven’t given up hope of getting back into the England squad by any means and playing well here will help me push my case and, hopefully, help Gloucester progress as well.”
Although he prefers to play on the wing, Voyce has played a lot of rugby at full-back and his signing talks with the now-departed Dean Ryan prior to his move involved discussions about a back-up role to England full-back Olly Morgan at Kingsholm.
Redpath has not changed Voyce’s brief and he wore the number 15 shirt against Bath eight days ago on his Gloucester debut, when the West Country rivals clashed in a joint testimonial for Lee Mears and Andy Hazell at Kingsholm.
“With Olly currently injured, it looks as though I’ll start the season at full-back and that has made the settling-in process a bit more difficult because the learning curve is that bit steeper than it would be playing on the wing,” he remarked.
“Getting used to the way the players do things and how the coaches want the team to play and my part in the scheme of things would be so much easier if I were on the wing because there’s less to get used to.
“But I’m here to play rugby and to do everything I can to make sure Gloucester continue to compete at the very highest level and that means I’ll do whatever is asked of me.
“I’ll chip in with observations when I’m asked for them and, maybe, speak up a bit more once I’ve earned the confidence of the rest of the squad and I accept that might take time.
“I certainly couldn’t have asked for a more demanding start to my career here than a home game against Bath - one of the best teams in the country and a very dangerous side - on the season’s opening weekend.
“It‘ll be an occasion to savour.” IN October 2010, Bath were preparing to face Biarritz in their opening Pool 4 match in the 2010/11 Heineken Cup on the back of an 18-3 home defeat by Gloucester...
VETERAN Bath loose-head David Barnes has urged his teammates to evoke the “Spirit of Toulouse” when the West Country club kicks off its Heineken Cup Pool 4 qualifying campaign against last season’s beaten finalists Biarritz at The Rec.
Two years ago, Bath came within an ace of beating European rugby’s most successful club in their opening pool match, losing out 18-16 to a last-gasp David Skrela penalty after outscoring Toulouse two tries to one.
“That was, arguably, our best allround performance in the Heineken Cup over the last few years and we’ll need to raise our game to that level of intensity, physicality and accuracy to beat Biarritz because winning your first pool match is vital to a good qualifying campaign,” said Barnes.
“We’re going into this weekend’s game on the back of a home Premiership defeat by Gloucester last
Friday night which was hard to take because we didn’t do ourselves justice but we’ve taken on board the fact that we didn’t implement the game-plan we had in place.
“It was a stark reality check for us all and we’ll react positively to it as a squad.”
Barnes may be a casualty if head coach Steve Meehan lives up to midweek hints that he could make changes to Bath’s line-up to cope with a Biarritz side which has won three of its last four Top 14 outings.
Meehan is expected to have England loose-head David Flatman and back-rower Simon Taylor back in the selection frame and he has former England Under-20 loosehead Nathan Catt pressing for a start after a number of impressive forays from the bench this season, along with youngster Ben Williams, who has scored tries in his last two appearances, and flankers Josh Ovens and Guy Mercer.
Catt could be handed the number one shirt with Taylor brought back into a back row, where England captain Lewis Moody will be absent for up to a month due to an eye injury, with Taylor a likely recall at number eight with skipper Luke Watson switched to the open side.
“Controlling Dimitri Yachvili’s influence on the game is a must for us because he makes Biarritz tick with his ability to play heads-up rugby, switch the point of attack quickly and a very good all- round kicking game,” said Meehan.
“Our set-piece work will need to be better and we will need to keep the ball way better than we did against Gloucester or we’ll be inviting trouble.”
For skipper Watson, a new arrival at Bath just in time for the start of a disastrous Heineken Cup qualifying campaign which saw the West Country side lose five of the six pool matches, effectively crashing out of the competition before Christmas, Bath’s opening pool game this year is, simply, a mustwin affair.
“We had a disastrous time in the competition last season, making an awful start in our pool when we went to play Ulster in the middle of a very dark time for Bath as a club and when you lose your first pool game the way we did in Belfast, the pressure is on right from the start of the qualifying phase,” he said.
“We had a few injuries during the early rounds and a few combinations around the team weren’t working well enough to compensate for having so many quality players unavailable and by the time those problems were solved, we had left ourselves with too much to do.
“This season, we’ll be going into the competition looking a lot stronger and, despite last weekend’s defeat by Gloucester, in a far more confident frame of mind and better equipped to deal with the unique pressures that comes with Heineken Cup rugby, where the successful sides down the years have proved that learning from every game you play breeds success.
“It doesn’t get any tougher than an opening pool game against last season’s beaten finalists Biarritz, whether it’s at home or away, but the one thing everybody knows about any competitive sport is that you have to beat the rest to be the best. And there’s no better place to start than turning over last season’s beaten finalists.”