New season, new regime, but it all felt more than a little familiar at the Stoop. Harlequins will point to an early lead and very definitely to a remarkable comeback with two tries in the last five minutes, which would have qualified as sensational had they managed another with the last play of the game to snatch the unlikeliest of wins.
The uncomfortable truth remains that they conceded five tries, which should have been six, and nearly 40 points at home to a side unlikely to be pushing for honours.
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Bath, who have hardly ripped up trees themselves, had too much. Two tries each for two strapping athletes on England’s radar, Zach Mercer and Joe Cokanasiga, either side of half-time broke the back of the home team, earning Bath a bonus point to boot. Cokanasiga, in particular, had Quins turning this way and that throughout, brandishing the ball in one hand like an amulet, or, if that did not work, simply crashing through them. But he was just the most obvious component of a Bath attack that, by simply running hard and straight, caused Quins far too many problems.
All of which inclined Todd Blackadder, Bath’s director of rugby, to come out swinging against recent reports that he had lost the dressing room. “It’s really interesting,” he said. “It’s absolute lies. I don’t know who the informants are. If they believe it’s true, then prove it. Someone must know better than me. Internally, it’s been really good. We’re just cracking on with our work.”
In the current climate, almost all directors of rugby are looking over their shoulders, each knowing a few defeats in a ferocious competition could spell trouble. And yet the tries keep coming. Blackadder is resigned to this being the norm. The English winter may yet have a say but for now the directive is to score more than the opposition. Blackadder’s charges did more than enough on that front but still had to sweat for five minutes of overtime as Quins tried to take more than the two bonus points they had snatched from nowhere.
By the hour mark, Bath had a 37-18 lead. Jamie Roberts, who had effectively swapped shirts with his opposite number, Ben Tapuai, over the summer, scored the opener, capitalising on smart work by Cokanasiga. Tapuai then broke to within yards of the Bath posts to set up Danny Care for an early riposte by Quins, which was further developed when James Chisholm intercepted Freddie Burns’s pass to lay on a try for Joe Marchant.
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That earned Quins a 10-point lead, but it did not feel convincing. Bath stuck to their patterns. With good reason is Mercer on England’s watch list, for he packs quite the punch. He drove through a phalanx of defenders for Bath’s second, before his close mate Cokanasiga took to the stage. The wing’s finish in the corner for Bath’s third, three minutes before the break, all but defied physics, and another attempt on the stroke of half-time was only a fraction too outrageous to seduce the TMO.
No matter, he had his second five minutes after the break for the bonus point. And 10 minutes later, Mercer all but sealed the game, cutting inside to gallop home from 30 metres for that seemingly unassailable lead. With eight minutes to go, Bath should have gone through 40 points when Chris Cook intercepted from 80 metres outbut an entirely unnecessary obstruction by Aled Brew, metres behind, led to it being chalked off.
It nearly cost Bath. Joe Marler crashed over for try number three, with four minutes to go, before more relentless hammering afforded Charlie Mulchrone a chink to dart through. That earned Quins those two bonus points. They had time for more but more would have represented daylight robbery.