Bath denied by Slater’s dramatic late try
For 76 minutes, the fiercest of West Country derbies had threatened to become the flattest of affairs. Yet what transpired in those final moments more than made up for the rest of a stuttering, stop-start affair.
With four minutes remaining Bath supporters thought they were celebrating a match-winning score as Semesa Rokoduguni grabbed his second try, set up by Taulupe Faletau’s stunning run.
But Gloucester refused to accept that as the final denouement. They regrouped and responded.
Phase after phase, they hammered on the Bath try-line until finally Ed Slater grounded the ball centimetres short of the line and, in the opinion of the television match official, was driven over under a pile of bodies. Owen Williams’ conversion on the angle in the eighth minute of injury time sealed Gloucester’s first away victory of the season. Resilience is not always a quality readily associated with the Cherry and Whites but they displayed it in spades here.
“The biggest plus for me was that the guys showed a lot of fight and a lot of character,” Johan Ackermann, their head coach, said. “My message to guys in the group was that if we didn’t win today and that try didn’t go our way, I would still have been extremely proud of how they stayed in the fight.”
Slater was at the heart of that fight. With all the focus on Leicester reaping the rewards of attaining wing Jonny May, it is easy to overlook how Slater also filled Gloucester’s need for a second-row forward of two parts mongrel and a few dashes of devil.
To emphasise that point, Slater suffered an accident in a warm-up two weeks ago where the bone pierced through the skin of one of his fingers. “Mildly irritating,” was his description.
Flanker Lewis Ludlow topped the tackle count with 17, while wing David Halaifonua twice marmalised Anthony Watson with thunderous hits.
The England wing was not the only man in the wars and flanker Sam Underhill was withdrawn at half-time with a “stinger” in his neck, although there is no indication it will impede his involvement with England in the autumn.
Of course, one side’s resolve can also be seen as another’s poor game management, which was the case for Todd Blackadder, Bath’s director of rugby. “For frustration it is nine out of 10,” he said.
“That was sub-standard from us. I never felt we were in that game and then somehow we got ourselves in a position where we could have shut it out but we didn’t. We allowed them to build pressure. It was error on error on error.
“It is the simple basics that we missed today. It is unforgivable.”
Gloucester took the lead inside five minutes. The try came from a loose Kahn Fotuali’i box kick that left Bath short of numbers on the blindside. The visitors immediately exploited the space with outside centre Henry Trinder breaking through a gap between Rokoduguni and Max Clark.
Trinder found Willi Heinz, whose dummy fooled Rhys Priestland, allowing the Gloucester scrum-half to stroll over the try-line unimpeded.
Bath’s try nine minutes later was a spitting image of Gloucester’s score. Play originated slightly deeper with a Bath scrum on the edge of the 22 but they too used an outside centre to attack the short side. This time Jonathan Joseph fended off Williams’s tackle to set up a two-on-one Watson and Rokoduguni did not spurn.
Despite dominating the rest of the half, Bath only had a single Priestland penalty to show for their efforts. Priestland and Williams exchanged penalties in the second half before Heinz scored his second try. John Afoa spotted Bath had left a ruck unguarded and burst through before delivering a wonderful back-of-the-hand offload assist to Heinz that a tighthead prop should have no right to pull off.
Bath thought they had found much-needed inspiration when Faletau stormed past three players and Rokoduguni left three more on the floor with an inside step. Slater, however, ruined the party.