Barf v Glaws

Ignoring the usual argument of whether this actually constitutes a West Country derby or rather Swindon v Birmingham game, the first Bath v Glaws game tomorrow night is shaping up as always to be a tasty affair. Neither side are in great form, although Bath are certainly playing better than Glaws' sporadic form. The Gods have conspired against Glaws by ensuring our 2 forms players are retained by England (36 & Trinder) and the weather is set to be torrential ensuring a forward dominated game. I did use to tease HERSH about Bath's powder puff front 5, but alas the tables have turned somewhat - or so the media would want you to believe... The Exeter performance was pure tripe from the Glaws forwards but the games against Perpignan and Munster saw a huge improvement where arguably the Glaws scrum was the stronger. With the added intensity of HC games could Glaws be in a better state of preperation than Bath following the rather meaningless group games of the Amlin?

I'd expect Glaws to put out the following side:
Murphy, Edmonds, Harden, Hudson, James, Savage, Kvesic, Kalamafoni, Cowan, Burns, May, Mills, Tindall, Sinbad, Cook

For my sins I am attending the game with 3 Bath supporters so I sincerely hope Glaws win, otherwise I am going to be in for a very tough night! As always enjoy the game  

I'll talk to myself

Both teams are up.

Bath
15. Anthony Watson; 14. Semesa Rokoduguni; 13. Jonathan Joseph; 12. Kyle Eastmond; 11. Matt Banahan; 10. George Ford; 9. Peter Stringer; 1. Paul James; 2. Rob Webber; 3. Anthony Perenise; 4. Stuart Hooper ( c ); 5. Dave Attwood; 6. Matt Garvey; 7. Francois Louw; 8. Carl Fearns

Replacements
16. Ross Batty; 17. Nathan Catt; 18. Juan Pablo Orlandi; 19. Will Spencer; 20. Alafoti Fa’osiliva; 21. Martin Roberts; 22. Gavin Henson; 23. Horacio Agulla

Glaws
Rob Cook; James Simpson-Daniel, Mike Tindall, Ryan Mills, Jonny May; Freddie Burns, Jimmy Cowan; Dan Murphy, Darren Dawidiuk, Rupert Harden; Elliott Stooke, James Hudson; Tom Savage (capt), Matt Kvesic, Sione Kalamafoni

Replacements:
Huia Edmonds, Yann Thomas, James Gibbons, Will James, Gareth Evans, Dan Robson, Charlie Sharples, Akapusi Qera

First of all many thanks to Stuart lancaster for keeing morgan, trinder and twlevetrees in the squad and releasing Eastmond and Attwood, unfortunatley he still has need for Wilson but we will forgive him that.

Im very pleased with the look of the bath team, love having James, webber, attwood, garvey, fearns and louw all in the team together for the first time and the backline has some real attacking threat to it. No disrespect to Gloucester but that bath side should be winning this game against a weakened team, and if we dont then we cant expect much this season. Ford vs Burns will be alot of fun to watch although the weather may scupper the spectacle..............come on bath!!!!!!!

Not far off full strength for Bath there, we've got to be targeting a win at home. Excited about seeing full strength back row of Louw, Garvey, Fearns for the first time and I'm not too upset that Glos are missing a few.

Interesting that Glos have gone 5-2 on the bench.

Looking forward to seeing Mills play, but hopefully he will have a stinker!

In Roko and Banners, we've got 2 very physical wingers, with Agulla on the bench. We'll look to threaten JSD and May, both can be got at defensively, but to be honest, if and when Glos get quick ball, we'll be under even more threat, as our two have their own defensive weaknesses!

With the weather, a lot of this will come down to the two captains' performances and then the old heads at 9 and the young pretenders at 10 pulling the strings. I'll miss the game as i'll be in the air, but good luck HKC.

Cheers Bathite. I must admit I'm not full of my usual chirpy confidence on this one. Your pack looks far too good for my liking!

I really like that Bath team, 5-8 is seriously strong and there is some real pace to burn in the backs too.
As said above I think Bath are lucky that only Wilson has been retained by England whereas Glos are missing a couple.

Really looking forward to the game and its on tv too, perfect!

Has Monahan fallen out of favour with Glaws or is he injured?

He dislocated his shoulder in the first friendly against Toulon andvis out for another two months.

Oh man thats not good. Hope he gets back to full fitness. He was in good form last season.

Sorry HKC but as a neutral I really can't see your boys winning this!

That Bath pack looks awesome, love the backrow as well, anyone know that combined weight?

Its going to be a tough ask that's for sure. Our best bet is to use our pace to get to the breakdown first and through the ball about a bit to tire out the big lumps...

Surely the result can only go one way?

yappysnap wrote:Sorry HKC but as a neutral I really can't see your boys winning this!

That Bath pack looks awesome, love the backrow as well, anyone know that combined weight?

Matt Garvey 6ft6, 20st
Francois Louw 6ft3 17st9lbs
Carl Fearns 6ft3 18st


Combined Height - 19ft
Combined Weight - 55st9lbs

I was at the Rec last year (well this yr, last season)
Bliddy freezing at the top of the scaffold stand that mid winter night.
Glaws hooker went off red for a tip tackle and that was it.
Eastmond had a great game I thought. Cannot recall a standout Glaws player that night of the 14 who completed the match. We went to the Boatman after for a consolatory pint before the drive back to Stroud.
On our form this season I cannot feel any confidence we will win tonight.

Gale force storms across the west country over the weekend, in conditions like that it could be anyones game just as scotland proved against australia in recent years. I love the backrow stats espcially the combined height   !!!! With a backrow like that you can tell we have a saffa in charge !

Not until Sunday!

Games tonight fella

haha friday night games always throw me ! cheers scrumpy

Some of Glos players really aren't good enough. Hudson's lack of power is clearly felt in the scrum, Harden, Dawidiuk and even Savage, who I think is massively overrated.

I an a neutral, but Barnes has been eating the blue cheese today. I have never seen him so blatantly favour the home side. A yellow card, and numerous penalties nor warranted plus he missed James and Bath putting on the shove, not just split seconds before the ball was in but whole seconds at nearly every scrum. Ignored his touch judges, never asked their opinion even when he was clearly unsighted

If this is his standard these days, he needs to be taken off the international panel and start learning again in the championship.

Blue black and white forever

Well a win is a win, especially over Glaws.
But considering the Bath dominance up front and a few decisions going our way, I would have hoped for more. For me Ford showed why he isn't quite at international level yet, missed kicks, a charged down try and considering the pack was on top, I feel he should have controlled the game a lot more. Still, 4 points and plenty to work on for next week.

Ford should have been replaced as he lost his head. Henson should have come on

Bath should really have won that easily but poor kicking and decision making on field and by the coaches meant Glaws could have sneaked that in the end.

Bathman_in_London wrote:Well a win is a win, especially over Glaws.
But considering the Bath dominance up front and a few decisions going our way, I would have hoped for more. For me Ford showed why he isn't quite at international level yet, missed kicks, a charged down try and considering the pack was on top, I feel he should have controlled the game a lot more. Still, 4 points and plenty to work on for next week.

To be honest, there are areas of his game where I think he can improve, and would need to to be an international. But his goal kicking I do not believe will ever be international class. He has one of the most technically awkward looking styles I've ever seen where he seems to be almost on top of the ball when he strikes it. Short of completely remodelling this, which I think is too late, I can't see him making it. Shame given his running, distribution and kicking from hand are so promising.

Finally back from Barf, so firstly HERSH wherever you may be, you truly were the better side last night and really should have won by a lot more.

To end the game with our 3rd choice LH and 4th TH indicates our problems in the front row. Harden is not a patch on what he was 2 years ago and I'd be amazed if he gets a new contract. Nigel Davies simply must pick Stooke and James together. The lineout may suffer but Hudson simply isn't a good enough scrummager. Furthermore Tony Windo needs to work on getting our flankers to push!

Nevertheless our never say die attitude showed up again and there were a fair few nervous Bath supporters near me at the end. It would have been an unfair victory but a LBP is acceptable. I thought our defence was excellent and our driving maul defence is far better as at the start of the season we were truly woeful.

Bath deservedly have taken the spoils but we shall have our revenge!

HongKongCherry wrote:Finally back from Barf, so firstly HERSH wherever you may be,  you truly were the better side last night and really should have won by a lot more.

To end the game with our 3rd choice LH and 4th TH indicates our problems in the front row. Harden is not a patch on what he was 2 years ago and I'd be amazed if he gets a new contract. Nigel Davies simply must pick Stooke and James together. The lineout may suffer but Hudson simply isn't a good enough scrummager. Furthermore Tony Windo needs to work on getting our flankers to push!

Nevertheless our never say die attitude showed up again and there were a fair few nervous Bath supporters near me at the end. It would have been an unfair victory but a LBP is acceptable. I thought our defence was excellent and our driving maul defence is far better as at the start of the season we were truly woeful.

Bath deservedly have taken the spoils but we shall have our revenge!

He isn't a good enough player. Fine for our club, but he's too light for a pack that really needs ballast.

What was with Bath there? They had so much possesion but just didn't look like they were concerned about tries, just kick the ball away every time and sit on a small lead. Really odd game to watch and I have to say I was cheering for Glos when they got that charge down.

On an England note a few on here have mentioned Ford isn't good enough yet, what did people think of Burns? I thought he had a poor game too with some shoddy kicking and not really controlling his backline.

Yappy, I have to say I thought Burns had a pretty decent game given the total lack of front foot ball. Bath's defence were up on Glaws due to this and so he had very little time to react.

HongKongCherry wrote:Yappy, I have to say I thought Burns had a pretty decent game given the total lack of front foot ball. Bath's defence were up on Glaws due to this and so he had very little time to react.

Yeah, yappy I think I'd say the same as HKC. Given the circumstances I thought he came out in far greater credit than Ford as well.

He came out over Ford but still did nothing to warrant getting back in the England 23. Just my opinion but he didn't threaten much with ball in hand, his offloads were pretty easily read and his kicking was poor out of hand. Obviously the weather and his pack had a large impact on this but for England he won't get an easy ride behind our forwards and the 6N's can be played in some horrendous weather.

Burns just needs to be given the shot long term I think, bringing him in, dropping him out isn't going to get him where he needs to be.

I'm not saying he deserves to be England first choice, but he would be our best option behind Farell, and he needs time to settle into the squad and system, he'd definately come good.

His form isn't helping massively right now, he either looks on fire or subdued.