‘Lack of discipline the decisive blow’
Bath lost - but that is no longer news, that is a given.
That is the depths to which this once great club has fallen.
For the best part of the last 50 years, Bath and Leicester Tigers have been two of the heavyweights of the English club game, with this a marquee fixture each season but on Friday night it was a battle of top of the league versus bottom.
In fairness to Bath, who have now extended their worst-ever start to a league campaign to seven games without a win, this didn’t look like a game between two sides at the opposite ends of the table as the Blue, Black and White stayed in the fight until late in the match before conceding a bonus point try to lose 40-23.
But where to go from here? That is a question potentially left to former Saracens CEO Ed Griffiths who was watching from the stands at a rocking Welford Road having been brought in at Bath to review everything going on at the club from top to bottom.
And bottom is where Bath will now stay until at least December, with Exeter Chiefs up next in Round Nine. Bath were defiant throughout, with captain for the night Josh Mcnally magnificent in defeat as he scored one try and had a second disallowed for a double movement.
There were moments of attacking invention with Max Clark finishing a lovely first half move that saw Danny Cipriani slip Tom Dunn through a gap with a deceiving short pass, for the hooker to find scrum-half Oli Fox who in turn offloaded to his centre to score.
Cipriani, who until now has been a bit-part player at Bath this season after arriving amongst a media flurry and blaring fanfare, had his best game for the club to date but perhaps worryingly was still a distant second-best to England star George Ford who finds himself in a rich vein of form despite having been ‘dropped’ by Eddie Jones for the Autumn internationals.
Ford finished with 25 points after a faultless kicking display, landing four penalties, four conversions as well as scoring one of Tigers’ four tries.
The other Leicester scores came from Nic Dolly, Matt Scott and Tom Cowan-dickie with the driving maul setting up two of them.
Speaking after the match Hooper said he believed his side had a chance to win the match but shot themselves in the foot through indiscipline, conceding 17 penalties and two yellow cards for Will Muir and Kieran Verden.
Hooper said: “That is a great example of a Premiership game, it is tight and little moments matter.
“We fought back to 23-20 but it ends with a blowout score because of some discipline issues.
“I just said to the lads in the huddle, we are not going to praise the effort you have put in because that is your job. That is what we do and lads care so much.
“I thought there were moments in the game we could have won it, there were definitely moments we could have got a losing bonus point but in the end we shoot ourselves in the foot and get nothing.”