Bath face Euro exit after being sliced apart by Scarlets
Michael Joyce, Konta’s new coach, tells Simon Briggs she is similar to former client Sharapova
Simply breathtaking. Scarlets have a storied history in Europe, but this will rank among their finest performances. They mesmerised Bath with their speed of thought and deed, like a stoat dancing around a defenceless rabbit.
Sixteen years ago, Stephen Jones, now the Scarlets attack coach, delivered an individual masterclass here in a 27-10 quarter-final victory. Last night was very much a collective work of art.
They started around 100mph and the pace only let up once their bonus point was secured through Scott Williams’s 51st-minute try. Even when they went down to 14 men in the first half, the Scarlets kept pressing the accelerator and ended up scoring two tries via Paul Asquith and Hadleigh Parkes while John Barclay was in the sin-bin.
If Warren Gatland wants a blueprint of how Wales need to evolve, then this is it. Ambition without accuracy is nothing, however, and the most impressive aspect of this performance was the way all 15 players, forwards and backs, acted in complete unison.
If their domination in open play was not enough, Wayne Pivac’s side also destroyed Bath at the set-piece.
In spite of the collective display, there were some standout individual performances from full-back Rhys Patchell, centre Parkes and flanker Aaron Shingler, who should all interest Gatland. Towering above them all was second row Tadhg Beirne, who delivered a tour de force for the ages. It is not yet job done. Should they beat Toulon in Llanelli next Saturday, then they will become the first Welsh region to reach the knockout stages since Cardiff Blues in 2012.
For Bath, it was a chastening night. Who knows what the watching Eddie Jones, the England head coach, made of it. Beno Obano, the loosehead prop, was the only contender to finish the evening in credit. Before this defeat, Bath were the only English team heading a group. Their qualification hopes are not quite dead and a bonuspoint win away to Treviso could see them through but, on this evidence, they do not belong in the same bracket as the Pro14 champions.
“It looks remote,” Todd Blackadder, their director of rugby, said. “Frustrating is an understatement. We were going for a home quarterfinal, so it is just c---. We are so inconsistent at the moment that it has to be mental.”
Without the injured Leigh Halfpenny, Scarlets decided to run the ball, whether they were in the Bath half or the shadow of their own posts. Their ambition was rewarded with a stunning try. It began with a Patchell offload inside his own 22 and, from there, Scarlets went for the kill, with Williams spreading the play with a huge miss-pass. Shingler broke the line and, with Bath’s defence still scrambling, Asquith set up Beirne, who stepped past a flat-footed Anthony Watson.
Bath, who lost Rhys Priestland to an apparent hamstring injury inside 30 seconds, briefly gained a foothold. Matt Banahan rumbled his way up to the try line before flanker Barclay was sin-binned for killing the ball.
Freddie Burns kicked the penalty. The man advantage did them no good. The Scarlets’ second try featured more slick handling. Shingler brutally handed off Chris Cook and Bath were again all at sea as Patchell and Parkes combined to put Asquith over in the corner.
Cook’s evening went from bad to worse. Shingler won clean line-out ball and fed scrum-half Gareth Davies, who ran straight at his opposite number before feeding Parkes for a stroll under the posts.
With their full complement restored, the Scarlets should have had more tries, but had to settle for a Dan Jones penalty as Bath retreated to the sanctuary of the dressing room at 22-3 adrift.
It proved a temporary respite. Scarlets now displayed a canny patience as they kept the ball within the Bath 22 until Patchell spotted a small opening to thread a grubber through for Williams to claim the bonus-point score. Game over.
Bath supporters were given something to cheer through Banahan’s dexterous finish and Zach Mercer’s close-range drive, but the race had been run by then, and Bath had been left for dead.
In his first interview since becoming Johanna Konta’s new coach, Michael Joyce explained yesterday why he was so excited about their partnership. He spoke warmly about her gifts and potential, but his central point was that she reminded him of his most famous client – five-time slam champion Maria Sharapova.
Joyce was the coach on deck for two of Sharapova’s major wins, in Melbourne and New York. He was also the man who steered her to world No 1 in 2005. Now he says that Konta – who will begin her Australian Open campaign against world No 92 Madison Brengle next week – has many of the same assets.
“She has a lot of characteristics like Maria,” says Joyce, himself an accomplished player who reached No 64 in the world in 1996. “They both want it really bad. They both aren’t going to cut corners to get there, or leave any stone unturned.
“I like the way Jo plays. I like the offensive-style player, and I think hers is a simple game if she’s executing. The hard part is to get them to do it day in and day out and to have confidence, to know they belong and that they can win a lot of matches on their terms.”
Joyce’s comments might sound surprising, given the superficial contrasts between Sharapova – the prodigy who won Wimbledon at 17 – and the late-blooming Konta.
Take the mental side of the game, for example. Is not Konta’s tendency to become anxious under pressure very different from Sharapova’s icy resolve? Not according to Joyce, who believes that he helped to create that bulletproof image in the first place.
“I’ll tell you, when Maria was 16 or 17, she got flustered,” says Joyce, 44. “She hated the junk-ball players. Maria might have been a little bit better, especially when she was younger, at hiding everything. But every player has had a freak-out moment. Some people have a freak-out six months. It’s just that a lot of players don’t like to talk about it.
“What Maria does as a competitor, I feel like I have a lot to with that, especially in her younger years. Half the battle is not showing your opponent things and not showing the way you feel. I have no doubt Jo will improve that as well. And the more she improves that, the better she’s going to end up being in the long run.”
Joyce was asked ed about the regular emotional al crises that his new client used to experience, and which held her back through her early y 20s. It was only after Konta started working with a mental coach – the late Juan Coto oto – that she began to deliver iver on her physical potential. ential.
“I saw some of f those meltdowns a few years ago before I really knew her,” says Joyce. “I remember telling g her coach, ‘I don’t ’t know exactly what you’ve done, but it’s pretty amazing to see a girl at her age be able to turn around her career like that’. So, from a distance, I admired what she was able to do. Obviously, spending the time with her, especially once we had decided to work together, I was informed of a lot of the stuff she had done.” There is still room for improvement here. Only last week, Konta (below) seemed to become overwhelmed by the pressure of defending a title in Sydney. Coming into the interview room, after a straight-sets loss against Agnieszka Radwanska in her opening match, she said: “One thing I would like to do better next time is panic less.” Her level did at least improve after a visit from Joyce in the second set, but it was not enough to save her.
“Jo’s openness actually makes my job a little easier,” says Joyce. “Because I’ve worked with girls before where I knew that was happening, but they pretended it wasn’t. After Sydney, I told her, ‘Maybe Maybe it it’s s good it happ happened’. When I went on court, I tried to take the pressure off off. I hope that’s something some I can help her he with.” Joyce’s Joy role with Sharapova ended en in 2011. “Over “O time, he h felt less like lik a coach th than a br brother,” Shar Sharapova wrote in her recent autobiogr autobiography. “And you know how it is – at some poin point you just stop listening t to your brother.”
After that, he wo worked with Jessie Pegula, a lower-ranked lo American, before signing up with two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka in March. That arrangement proved short-lived, however, because Azarenka became mired in a child-custody battle that continues to keep her off the tour.
“I was really excited when I started working with Vika,” says Joyce. “I wanted to be with someone who I thought could win a grand slam, because I kind of missed that. Then when the opportunity came up with Jo I knew right off the bat that she’s a contender to get to the top. She’s proven that. She’s got pretty close. To be part of that journey with her is really exciting for me.”
The landscape of women’s tennis is very different now than when he
‘I knew right off the bat that she’s a contender to get to the top. She’s proven that’
was steering Sharapova, however. “I feel the top 10 maybe aren’t as good as 10 years ago, depth-wise,” he says. “I mean, thinking back to when I was with Maria, you had Serena and Venus and Davenport, Clijsters and Henin. You could go down the list of a really good top-10, 15 players. But I feel like girls who are ranked 40 or 50 now are a lot better than then.
“In the past, you’d look at a grand slam and say there’s probably three or four girls who can win it. Usually Serena was right up there, of course.
“Now you can look at this tournament and say there’s probably 20 girls who can win, maybe even more.
“I am sure nobody thought Sloane [Stephens] was going to win the US Open. Nobody thought [Jelena] Ostapenko was going to win the French Open. It’s wide open.”
Is Konta – who is seeded No 9 here – one of those potential champions? “Absolutely,” Joyce replies. “For me, she has as good a chance as anybody. It’s just there’s probably 25 people who can do it.”