Professional sport is a trying business, but it is difficult to imagine a more psychologically traumatic experience than the one Freddie Burns endured in the space of three minutes here. Twice, he contrived in the dying minutes to miss as easy a pair of opportunities to win a match that sport can offer, let alone the professional variety.
Bath were trailing by two points with seven minutes to play when they were awarded a penalty in front of the posts. Burns stepped up and hit the post. Bad. But nothing compared with what followed.
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A brilliant Semesa Rokoduguni break had Bath deep in the Toulouse 22, where Burns slashed through the fringes to the line. Euphoric at the apparent redemption, he went to touch down with one hand, celebrating with the other, only for Maxime Médard to nip in from behind and knock the ball out of his hand.
The Rec was stunned. Worse still, Burns was substituted a minute later, a gratuitous further humiliation that calls into question man-management at Bath, let alone the long-harboured questions over their composure.
“We’ve got far bigger issues than Freddie dropping the ball or missing that kick,” said Rhys Priestland, Bath’s captain. “It’s something for us to talk about, celebrating before scoring tries. Freddie hasn’t cost us the game. We weren’t good enough. But, as a squad, I can’t believe we do celebrate before we put the ball down. It’s not the first time. I honestly don’t know what boys think they’re going to achieve by doing it. For me, that’s nonnegotiable. We can’t do it again.”
Bath suffered similar frustration on the opening weekend against Bristol when Tom Homer tried to dot down one-handed, dropped it – and Bath went on to lose by seven. Then, two weeks later, they had a try chalked off for Aled Brew’s mindless decision to block Nathan Earle as Chris Cook scampered clear. They got away with that one, Quins’ late comeback falling five points short, but Todd Blackadder, the Bath coach, was seething then. He was pretty much at a loss here.
Burns himself tweeted: “Love this sport for the highs and the lows. Today was an ultimate low and a mistake I’ll learn from.”
And so Bath yielded to Toulouse a precious away win. It was a fascinating encounter, if mainly for its wildness and the chronic inconsistency of the teams, Burns’s trauma no more than an extreme example of the sort of thing this flaky Bath team put their supporters through on a weekly basis. Both sides played their way fitfully into a match enjoyable for its highlights, if chaotic and loose at all other times. Toulouse’s heavy artillery looked knackered for much of it; Bath just looked edgy.
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Until such moments as either side clicked. Toulouse were first to, Médard crossing in the ninth minute, when the most massive of them all, Joe Tekori, flashed the hands of a pianist to put him away. Cheslin Kolbe on the other wing, flashing the feet of a dancer, paved the way for Sofiane Guitoune to score Toulouse’s second a few minutes before the break, pulling the visitors back to within five.
In between Bath had hit their peak of coherence, two tries of patient and precise approach work taking them into a 10-point lead. Jamie Roberts chose a powerful line for the first and pre-trauma Burns finished smartly for the other.
We nearly had Europe’s latest red card on the stroke of half-time. The game stopped as the officials and everyone else tried to work out whether Jerome Kaino’s tackle on Roberts was worthy of rugby’s “what a hit” approbation or its “red card” condemnation. It was next to impossible to tell, the margin between the two almost nonexistent. The ref settled for a yellow. Roberts’s comeback from a facial injury, though, was cut short prematurely. The sooner they lower the legal height of the big hit, the better.
Toulouse might have seen red a few minutes into the second half when Lucas Pointud’s head caught that of Nathan Catt at a clear-out. But instead it was Bath who saw the next card, yellow to Tom Ellis for a tip tackle, and costly it would prove.
Burns and Thomas Ramos had exchanged penalties before Toulouse struck just at the end of Ellis’s exile. Their forwards, suddenly looking a little less knackered with a new front row and an extra back-row forward, drove close, and Guitoune glided through the outside-centre channel. Ramos’s conversion took the visitors into that lead at the start of the final quarter. It paved the way for the misery of Burns. How long it takes him to recover, or even whether he does, remains to be seen. But Bath’s hopes in Europe for another season are unlikely to.