5 reasons why Bath Rugby fell short in the Gallagher Prem this season

Just when Bath fans of a certain vintage were getting used to the idea of repeat trips to Twickenham at the end of the season like the good, old days of the 1980s and 90s, Exeter came along and reminded them that sustained success in the Prem is never a given.

Exeter had never lost in the play-offs going into last weekend’s do-or-die clash against Bath, but history was against them by virtue of the fact all their previous wins at the business end of the season had been at home. Only six times out of 43 had the away side won in the play-offs, but Exeter defied the odds to come back from 26-10 down at half-time and beat Bath 27-26 and make it seven in a pulsating match at a sold-out Rec.

So, once again, there will be a new champion this season, with Bath handing over the trophy that they won after 29 years of hurt in 2025, to either the Chiefs or the red-hot favourites Northampton, who booked their place in the final with a thrilling 45-31 win over derby rivals Leicester.

As one of the most astute analysts in the game, Bath boss Johann van Graan won’t be short of ideas on what went wrong, but we have our own theories as to why his team have missed out on a third straight final.

The loss of Lee Blackett

When Blackett was on the payroll, Bath not only had the best attack coach in the English game but also a second Director of Rugby in all but name. Blackett’s loss to England was felt every bit as keenly as when Leicester said goodbye to Steve Borthwick, the man who hired Blackett, shortly after he’d led the Tigers to the Prem title.

Blackett recommended former RL player, Martin Gleeson, who he’d worked with at Wasps, as his replacement, but it always had the feeling of a stop-gap appointment and certainly not like-for-like in terms of quality. As for Gleeson’s impact, the fact that it became clear he wasn’t being kept on midway through the season suggests it wasn’t working as well as all had hoped.

In the numbers game, Bath’s attack in 2025/26 compared favourably to the title-winning campaign, with just as many tries scored (102) in one game fewer, while the team’s conversion rate in the opposition 22, something they prided themselves on under Blackett, remained the same (a red-zone entry resulted in a try 40% of the time). But in a league that is becoming increasingly fast-paced and basketball-like in its scoring, to stand still is to move backwards, and Bath’s attack just felt a bit ‘off’ and lacking the same rhythm under Gleeson.

Gallagher Premiership

P

W

L

D

PF

PA

PD

BP T

BP-7

BP

Total

1

Northampton

18

14

3

1

74

2

Bath

18

13

5

0

69

3

Exeter Chiefs

18

11

6

1

65

4

Leicester

18

12

6

0

63

5

Saracens

18

10

8

0

57

6

Bristol

18

11

7

0

54

7

Sale

18

5

13

0

36

8

Gloucester

18

5

13

0

32

9

Harlequins

18

6

12

0

31

10

Newcastle

18

2

16

0

12

Have Bath been found out?

In one of his media sessions a few weeks ago, Johann van Graan confirmed in passing what we already knew – that his team has a very distinct way of playing. It’s a game based on power and putting pressure on the opposition in the right areas, with a heavy reliance on getting over the gainline and putting the defence on the back foot.

Human wrecking ball Alfie Barbeary is key to the machine working well, and in 2024/25 the No.8 started 13 of Bath’s Prem games compared to just eight this time around. With that in mind, it’s telling that post-contact metres made was one of the few performance metrics where Bath went backwards, having averaged 111.9 per match in 2024/25 and 97.3 in the season just gone.

Barbeary had niggles at different times, one injury prevented him from starting the season, but for a player who began 2026 with a hat-trick of Player of the Match (POTM) displays, he was perhaps under-used. All the speculation around his move to Saracens won’t have helped, and his decision to go there, not for any more money by all acounts, suggests there may be more to it than meets the eye.

The first of Barbeary’s POTM displays was against Exeter just after New Year, when Bath needed a last-second try from fellow No.8, Arthur Green, to win them the game. Green plundered over after a long sequence of pick-and-gos, Bath’s tried-and-trusted method of scoring whilst near the opposition try-line, but it’s a tactic that came back to bite them when the Chiefs returned to The Rec last weekend and successfully defended 41 short-range phases. At that point, you couldn’t help but feeling Exeter, and Rob Baxter, had worked them out.

Competing on two fronts

Many a team before them have struggled to cope with the twin demands of Champions Cup rugby and the Prem, and no doubt plenty will struggle in the future whilst the salary cap is in place. But is was evident this year that the pressure of going deep into the Champions Cup, deeper than they had done for two decades, had an adverse effect on Bath’s form in the league.

Having gone to Northampton with a weakened team and only lost by three points, 41-38, Bath went into the semi-final against Bordeaux-Begles in good shape. But three defeats in five games followed their agonising 38-26 exit at Stade Atlantique Bordeaux Metropole, suggesting it had taken the wind out of their sails, as well as depriving them of the services of winger Will Muir, a key man in their kick-to-compete strategy.

Bath victories from that point were against the league’s cellar dwellers, Newcastle, and for half of that game the reigning Prem champions failed to register a point, and then in the Round 18 clash against Leicester, a match which was on a knife-edge throughout and could have easily gone the other way.

A Champions Cup/Prem double has only been achieved three times since it was decided in 2003 that the champions of England would be decided by a play-off system (Saracens in 2016 and 2019 and Exeter in 2020).

Not getting the most out of new signings

It would be churlish to criticise Henry Arundell after he finished his first season at Bath as the club’s leading try scorer, with 18 tries in all competitions. However, for long periods in matches, the England international was largely redundant, with Bath opting to keep things tight rather than spread the play wide. At times, Arundell would have been excused for standing there with his hands in his pockets, just like Bath legend David Trick used to do when waiting for an opportunity to show off his blistering pace.

A lot of Arundell’s tries didn’t come off the back of the ball moving fluently along the back line but rather from opportunist scores, as a result of intercepts or dropped passes, and from kick-passses to the wide channel. In a team like Northampton, you’d bank on Arundell ripping up the try-scoring record books.

Bath’s other big summer signing, Santi Carreras, arrived at The Rec from arch West Country rivals Gloucester amid much fanfare, and it was well deserved. A star of the Pumas, Carreras finished the 2025 edition of The Rugby Championship as top points scorer, with a near-90% success rate in front of goal.

While Carreras is no doubt a classy footballer, and Bath fans will be hoping better times lay ahead, it’s fair to say he failed to show his best in blue, black and white, other than in the home game against Harlequins, either as a playmaker or a goalkicker.  Carreras was only successful with 57% of his attempts at goal.

The Finn Russell-factor

Post-Lions, Finn Russell did not have anywhere near as big an impact this season than he had done in the two previous years. And part of that was down to the fact he wasn’t around as much to scatter his stardust on the pitch. Whether it was through rest periods, squad rotation and latterly injury, the Scotland international missed more Prem games this season at 10 (eight) than he had done in the previous two years put together (six).

Russell’s ability to put Bath in the right areas, delay a pass to open up a hole that wouldn’t ordinarily be there, or steady the side emotionally with his calm demeanour makes him invaluable to the blue, black and whites, and it’s no coincidence that their season fell away while he was out with a tight calf.

In the 44 Prem games Russell has started at fly-half for Bath, 34 have been wins (77%), whereas Bath are six wins from 14 (43%) when he isn’t running the show. The win percentage is better this season than in the two previous campaigns, suggesting that Bath’s greater squad depth has helped, but the three losses when he’s not been playing have come in the last six league games, a time of the year when cool heads are needed the most.