Worcester put heat on Irish with big win over Leicester
BATH scored the quickest bonus point of the season as Quins were blown away in the first quarter to make the rest of the game academic.
It took the hosts only 18 minutes to run in four tries, three of them in the absence of visitors’ flanker, James Chisholm, who was sin-binned for tip-tackling Kahn Fotuali’i.
The collection of the bonus point beat the previous best by Saracens, who scored their four in 29 minutes in their opener against Northampton.
Bath director of rugby Todd Blackadder said: “It was an outstanding first 20 minutes. I’m proud we are able to transfer all our hard work into a complete performance.
“We didn’t try to force it and created so many opportunities that we couldn’t have scripted it better.
“Our shape was dominant and ruthless and our execution was bang on.”
Bath were mightily impressive in that first 20 minutes and gave a perfect demonstration on how to capitalise against 14 men.
Some of Quins’ tackling was paper thin but rampant Bath had star performers everywhere. Zach Mercer was a livewire, Matt Garvey and Elliot Stooke were excellent workhorses and half-backs, Freddie Burns and Kahn Fotuali’i, took all the right options.
Centres Ben Tapuai and Matt Banahan caused havoc in the opposition ranks allowing James Wilson and Aled Brew to display their attacking skills.
In contrast, Quins had some underperformers with Mat Luamanu having a nightmare with his ball retention. Young prop Lewis Boyce and David Ward battled hard and James Lang looks a promising prospect but their coaching staff will be con- cerned about how easily they were dispatched in that dramatic opening making the rest of game irrelevant.
It took just two minutes for Bath to open their account when a brilliant run from Mercer saw him hold off four defenders to send Paul Grant over.
Then came Chisholm’s disastrous yellow card and within a minute, Bath had capitalised when Jack Wilson and Stooke made big dents in the defence for Burns to have an unopposed stroll to the line.
For the third, Luamanu lost possession. Garvey and Banahan made the running for Stooke to cross before Fotuali’i darted away from a scrum to deliver an excellent overhead pass to Banahan for the bonus point.
Quins’ woes were compounded when they lost Marcus Smith and Charlie Matthews with head injuries, but on the return of Chisholm, they became competitive with a period of sustained pressure which ended with Jono Kitto creating a try for Smith’s replacement, Henry Cheeseman.
A penalty from Burns gave his side a 29-7 interval lead before Kyle Sinckler returned for his first action since his seven-week suspension for gouging.
Burns missed a penalty and then kicked one before being replaced as one of a raft of Bath substitutions, but it was the visitors who scored the only try of the second half when, from broken play, Gabriel Ibitoye raced 80 metres for a great solo effort after Josh Lewis had lost possession.
Lewis made amends with two penalties but by then the game had fizzled out.