Bath hold off Leicester to win Premiership title after 23-21 victory – as it happened
Here’s the full match reportIt’s Bath’s turn to collect their neckwear, with the mood joyous.Ben Spencer is last to reach the stage, grip the trophy and hold it high as his squad go berserk around him and are joined by half the stadium.The Leicester player file up for the medals, the cameras lingering on Youngs and Cole, who would have wished for a better day in their final outing.It’s not faint praise to say that the Tigers did the absolute best they could today, sometimes the other lot are simply better and there’s not much you can do about it.Johan van Graan is a picture of emotion; praying, crying, beaming – in that order.
He’s shepherded this team from near relegation to the pinnacle of today and no-one deserves this more.Ben Spencer is on his knees in tears, club legend Tom Dunn is a picture of joy and the noise is huge as Bath finally – finally! – have another league title after a generation of waiting.They’ve been the best team all year and this is a deserved and correct conclusion to the season and this match, where the west country team’s superiority was evident throughout.80 mins.The ball is clamped in the ruck while the seconds ebb away, then released to captain Spencer who hammers it into touch.
Game over, Bath have done it!79 mins.Youngs puts a box kick up for Radwan to compete for, but it’s too deep and an easy claim for Muir.Bath have the ball with no time left to hold it and win.Why on earth did Leicester decide to boot the ball away at this point? They are likely not to get it back.78 mins.
Bath are on the ball after dallying as long as possible at the lineout,They are trying to suck the possession in and the seconds of time along with it,76 mins,Ilione takes the ball on the run and piles into three tacklers, who are not enough to stop him muscling over the line,Pollard converts and it’s a two point game with minutes left!74 mins.
The lineout is won and the maul forms to drive the Tigers towards the line.The ball won’t come out but Bath collapse it and are penalised; the next Leicester attack features more carries to the line and more of Bath infringing.Tigers will go again.73 mins.Pepper is too keen at the ruck and a penaly is awarded that Pollard booms into touch on the Bath 5m line.
71 mins.Russell gathers himself and hammers the kick over for another three points.69 mins.A howl goes up among the Bath fans as Cole jumps to charge down a Russell kick, misses the ball but does not miss the Scotsman as he clatters him on the way down with his shoulder.Ref Dickson brandishes the yellow in his general direction67 mins.
The Tigers regather and reshape the attack, pounding the carries in the 22 and up to the tryline on the left with Ilione dragged down inches short.The ball is reset and the carries come again with Bath drifting offside, but no matter as Kata rams himself over the line to ground with an outstretched arm.Pollard converts.65 mins.Hassell-Collins appears in the 13 channel and waltzes through a gap towards the Bath 22.
His pass to Radwan is both behind the winger and over his head, so he does a very good job to leap and clutch it but it takes all the momentum out of the attack.62 mins.More volume from the crowd again as Dan Cole enters the game.He needs to score a couple of tries and put pressure on Bath’s kicking to make a real difference.Probably too big an ask for a 74-year-old prop.
60 mins.Another well weighted kick, this one for Spencer, is won on the chase by Muir who falls to the floor and recycles it for the ball to be popped left to Pepper running up the left touchline to step and finish like a winger.But the TMO wants a word! On the replay it’s clear Muir loses control of the ball and spills it forward under his torso as he hit the turf after his great catch.A shame, as that was an outstanding finish by Pepper.57 mins.
Finn Russell is conducting a vice-like clamping of the Leicester team as he probes and punts the ball from a position of comfort behind his pack,The latest kick is perfectly weighted to cause Steward a problem and the big fullback is beaten to it,The retained Batch possession results in a Spencer kick pinning the Tigers back in their own half,54 mins,The crowd volume rises as Ben Youngs replaces Van Poortvliet.
Ilione is also on, replacing Reffell.Good roll of the dice by Cheika, and Leicester are looking increasingly listless and confused.52 mins.There may be nearly half and hour left, but that score feels like the death-knell of Leicester’s hopes, particularly after the Pollard penalty miss earlier.49 mins.
Leicester are on the ball until Pollard lollops a pass into midfield witthout scanning the defence.Finn Russell saw it coming from last Tuesday and he flies up to intercept and gallop towards the line.He had the pace and space to get there but in typical fashion decides that would be too boring and so passes it inside to Ojomoh to do the honours under the posts.Conversion is added48 mins.There’s some possession for Leicester in the Bath half, the ball being worked to the right for strong carry from Steward.
On the recycle Pollard puts a kick up towards Cokanasiga’s wing to test his handling once more, but it’s too deep and the winger can catch and mark it.45 mins.Bath run a lovely first phase pattern from a lineout on halfway that puts Cokanasiga into a midfield gap, but the big fella knocks it on again.On a positive note, the moves are absolutely creating confusion and therefore gaps in the Tigers defence if they could just hold onto the sodding ball!43 mins.Van Poortvliet returns the ball via long kick and Tom De Glanville attempts the same, but his is a full three shredded wheat effort which bounces and rolls dead.
Leicester have an attack from back where he kicked on the Bath 10m line, in which Obano is pinged at the ruck.Pollard calls for the tee and from 4o metres on the right of the posts he pulls it left, his face contorting into a confused expression as if this has never happened to him before.To be fair, it rarely does.Russell sends it deep and the game is back underwayThere’s drama and tension, alright, but not a huge amount of consistent quality in this showpiece final so far.The heat and humidity isn’t helping, either.
Bath are the best second half team in the land, as was seen vs Bristol last week, and the final period of the first half suggests they are starting to turn the dial on their superiority,Leicester will hope they can improve the discipline and continue to disrupt,40 mins,The Leicester captain is very keen to make amends and hammers into a ruck to try and nick the ball,He thinks he’s won it, but Ref Dickson is of the opinion it wasn’t done legally and awards a penalty.
It’s a long way out but Russell blooters it between the posts to end the half.39 mins.The scrum comes to nothing as pressure from Du Toit causes Smith to hinge and concede a penalty for Bath to relieve the pressure.Montoya returns and his side have managed to not concede any points while he was gone.36 mins.
After absorbing pressure for so long Pollard decides it’s time his side exerted some of their own and he creams a beauty of a kick into the deep right corner that puts Muir under all sorts of pressure from Radwan on the chase.Bath try to play out but fumble the ball and Leicester will have a scrum platform on the Tigers 22.34 mins.The dominance of Bath in recent minutes means they are soon back up to the line and indeed over it on their next possession, however Radwan limpets onto the ball to prevent it from being grounded.Pollard will drop-out from under the sticks.
31 mins.Bath move up the the tryline from the yellow card penalty but lose the ball once more.The TMO’s eagle eye has spotted that Nicky Smith may have flirted the ball out of the hands of a Bath player while they were both prostrate on the line.Ref Dickson, who has had a busy half, rules it wasn’t deliberate and is nothing more than an Bath knock-on.(Narrator: It absolutely was deliberate)“Karl Dickson is refereeing the breakdown like it’s the glory days of Bath Leicester c1993” emails Hamish Allen.
The Guy Pepper decision on 25 mins was very generous to Bath, it has to be said.28 mins.The hooker is very, very lucky here.He was the second man into a tackle on Hill, flew in high and his right shoulder clouted the Bath man’s napper without any wrapping of the arm and lining up from distance.Ref Dickson concludes that Hill was moved by the first tackler at the last moment which caused the shoulder to head degree of danger, rather than the action of Montoya.
With respect, that is nonsense and it should have been red.27 mins.The ball is won cleanly from a lineout on the 22 and the ball fizzes right via Russell and De Glanville.Leicester haul them down on the five metre line but the big prop sets his sights on driving over the line and gets there despite the attention of a tackler.Russell converts.
25 mins,Guy Pepper fights hard to win a turnover at the ruck that Ref Dickson rules was fair and this allows him to pop the ball to Muir who carries into the Bath 22,Leicester don’t sleep on their defesive scramble and manage to disrupt enough to rip the ball back and boot it clear,23 mins,The Tigers finally show some of their attacking shape with Pollard spurning the chance to kick from his own half and instead feeding Hassell-Collins who gets them moving forward.
There’s a lot of zip and as they move the ball right and then back left but again the ball spills forward.Everyone looks shattered already, as the heat of the day belts down upon them.20 mins.Leicester spring from the resulting scrum, with Kata and Cracknell having good runs.This is instanty ruined by van Poortliet whomping the ball out on the full which hands a lineout to Bath back on halfway.
It’s then Russell’s turn to knock it on when it looked easier to catch the ball.I make that five handling errors from Bath, most of which were not under any pressure really.17 mins.We’re approaching the end of the first quarther of the match and it’s been very bits and pieces so far with neither side showing any clear patterns of possession.Yet as I type this Bath have worked up to double figures of phases in the Leicester half.
Everyone is getting their hands on the ball but it looks a little lateral until Russell drops a shoulder, steps inside and offloads to Cokanasiga in midfield who has open pasture to the line if only he can hold onto the ball; which he doesn’t.Gah!14 mins.A worrying early pattern of poor discipline is settling in from Leicester, the latest of which has Russell putting the ball into touch is the 22 from a penalty.It’s a promising attacking position but Bath are again imprecise with their handling, this time Ojomoh bouncing the ball off his fingers in midfield.We’ll have another Tigers scrum, this one on midway inside their own half
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