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'Flip-flops and ripped t-shirts - Bath were the boy band of rugby'

By Liam Heagney
Bath celebrate their 1996 English Cup win (Photo by David Tyrrell/EMPICS via Getty Images)

Bath have not been a consistent heavyweight in the professional rugby era, their struggles continuing to this day with Johann van Graan, their latest coach, enduring a difficult first few months in charge in the 2022/23 Gallagher Premiership season before some wins finally came to lift the team off the bottom of the league.

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It’s now 25 years since their first campaign in the professional era – 1996/97 – ended in failure. They had finished out the 1995/96 season, the last in England before the clubs turned pro, by claiming their sixth league title, pipping Leicester to first place by a point, and then defeating the Tigers to secure their tenth English Cup final title in front a then world record club attendance of 75,000 at Twickenham.

The following season, though, their amateur-era supremacy came apart at the seams with the sport going pro at club level. Bath finished six points behind the first-past-the-post league champions Wasps, they were knocked out of the cup in the round of 16 by Leicester and they were also defeated by Cardiff in the quarter-finals in the first Heineken European Cup campaign to feature clubs from England.

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Bath did gloriously get it right at the second attempt, becoming the first British side to lift the Heineken Cup when they defeated Brive in the 1998 final in Bordeaux. That incredible decider has now been brilliantly remembered in the latest episode of Rugby Stories, the BT Sport Pods series that has been recalling famous moments in the histories of the Premiership clubs.

This compelling story of the Bath European success, however, had its genesis in what unfolded during their haphazard 1996/97 attempt to make the transition from amateur to professional. Former Test-level duo Richard Webster and Andy Nicol were among those to shed light on those teething issues.

Ex-Wales forward Webster, who moved from the 1993 Lions tour into rugby league with Salford, recalled his first impressions of the professional-era Bath. “I went to the first game in a blazer and a tie like I would normally and they all turned up in flip-flops and ripped t-shirts. They were the pop stars, they were the boy band of the rugby world. They were confident.

“They did come from a very successful amateur era which I had watched and admired but then as they came into the professional era, it didn’t quite pay off. Brian Ashton was the head coach and he had this idea of complete rugby and he wanted the ball in play, he used to time us on how long we kept the ball in play.

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“He didn’t want it kicked off, didn’t want dead play, he wanted the ball to be played in the hands as much as possible so they were trying to play a brand of rugby and we wanted to be the best team but it wasn’t a marker and coming into the professional era, Europe became a marker but unfortunately we were off the mark for the first year.”

Ex-Scotland scrum-half Nicol, who was skipper for 1998 European final, added his take on how the Bath amateur-era dominance diminished in that first professional season after they failed to understand what the transition should have involved.

“It was appalling but we weren’t alone. When the game went professional nobody knew what to do. Nobody knew how to prepare a rugby team in a professional environment.

“The only team that did it well was Newcastle because under John Hall they were aligned to Newcastle United. They knew sports science, recovery, nutrition, all of that because Newcastle United Football Club had done it for years and years and years. The rest of the rugby teams were just making it up.

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“There was almost a blank sheet of paper. We went from training twice a week and playing on a Saturday to training twice a day and playing on Friday, Saturday, Sunday depending on when the TV game dictated it. It was like they filled each day with training and there was no real science to it.

“It was probably the science that was available at the time but you look back even five years into professional and you go, ‘Wow, we got that so wrong’. I don’t know who it was that said this but I’ll take credit for it if I can’t remember who it was – Bath were the most professional of amateur sides yet the most amateur of professional sides.”

Back to Webster, who compared life as a pro rugby league player to what he initially encountered at Bath. “I played for Salford for four seasons and in four seasons we never tackled each other once in training, we never did one physical contact session but when we went into the game in rugby league an unwritten rule is there are 13 of you and we were hard and 13 of you stand up and be counted.

“I have seen small backs, outside halves playing with broken arms until they get dragged off. That’s the unwritten rule but we never had to do it in training, it was always done on the field. I went to Bath and why I don’t think they grasped the professional era quite so much was we trained five days a week and every day we beat each other up in training.

“When we came to the weekend we weren’t quite as sharp as we should have been but I think it was a case of ‘we’re paying you, we’re paying you lots of money, you do as we say’ which didn’t really work out when it came to putting it out on the field on a Saturday.”

“We didn’t make that transition well at all,” agreed Nicol. “As I say we weren’t alone in that, it’s just I guess because of the success that Bath had had in the amateur era everyone just presumed that that success would continue and the mistakes that were made meant we probably came back in the pack a little bit.”

  • For the full Bath episode, check out BT Sport’s podcast series, Rugby Stories, part of the BT Sport Pods lineup of podcasts. Every Monday, Rugby Stories, presented by Craig Doyle, will spotlight and celebrate English club rugby history. Btsport.com/pods
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Jon 7 hours ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?

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j
john 10 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

But here in Australia we were told Penney was another gun kiwi coach, for the Tahs…….and yet again it turned out the kiwi coach was completely useless. Another con job on Australian rugby. As was Robbie Deans, as was Dave Rennie. Both coaches dumped from NZ and promoted to Australia as our saviour. And the Tahs lap them up knowing they are second rate and knowing that under pressure when their short comings are exposed in Australia as well, that they will fall in below the largest most powerful province and choose second rate Tah players to save their jobs. As they do and exactly as Joe Schmidt will do. Gauranteed. Schmidt was dumped by NZ too. That’s why he went overseas. That why kiwi coaches take jobs in Australia, to try and prove they are not as bad as NZ thought they were. Then when they get found out they try and ingratiate themselves to NZ again by dragging Australian teams down with ridiculous selections and game plans. NZ rugby’s biggest problem is that it can’t yet transition from MCaw Cheatism. They just don’t know how to try and win on your merits. It is still always a contest to see how much cheating you can get away with. Without a cheating genius like McCaw, they are struggling. This I think is why my wise old mate in NZ thinks Robertson will struggle. The Crusaders are the nursery of McCaw Cheatism. Sean Fitzpatrick was probably the father of it. Robertson doesn’t know anything else but other countries have worked it out.

40 Go to comments
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Adrian 12 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

Thanks Nick The loss of players to OS, injury and retirement is certainly not helping the Crusaders. Ditto the coach. IMO Penny is there to hold the fort and cop the flak until new players and a new coach come through,…and that's understood and accepted by Penny and the Crusaders hierarchy. I think though that what is happening with the Crusaders is an indicator of what is happening with the other NZ SRP teams…..and the other SRP teams for that matter. Not enough money. The money has come via the SR competition and it’s not there anymore. It's in France, Japan and England. Unless or until something is done to make SR more SELLABLE to the NZ/Australia Rugby market AND the world rugby market the $s to keep both the very best players and the next rung down won't be there. They will play away from NZ more and more. I think though that NZ will continue to produce the players and the coaches of sufficient strength for NZ to have the capacity to stay at the top. Whether they do stay at the top as an international team will depend upon whether the money flowing to SRP is somehow restored, or NZ teams play in the Japan comp, or NZ opts to pick from anywhere. As a follower of many sports I’d have to say that the organisation and promotion of Super Rugby has been for the last 20 years closest to the worst I’ve ever seen. This hasn't necessarily been caused by NZ, but it’s happened. Perhaps it can be fixed, perhaps not. The Crusaders are I think a symptom of this, not the cause

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