From the most exciting side in the Aviva Premiership to a wet rag of a side

Remember those halcyon days of spring-time electrification at The Rec? Those moments when, with the ground firming up, the daffodils sprouting and the days lengthening, Bath Rugby sent a shiver down the spine with displays of attacking audacity and top-drawer skills?
Days like this:

Where there was once 2,000 volts of electricity, there is now barely a current. And there is certainly no spark.
Bath's display against Northampton Saints on Saturday was awful and embarrassing. So much so that the club's own coaches described it as such, even issuing an apology to the 12,200 fans who had parted with their cash in order to witness such a car crash of a performance.
In both 2010 and 2011, Bath experienced truly grim starts to the season, but salvaged respect and league position with end-of-term displays that blended a heady cocktail of panache and skill.
Lamentably, it's been a different tale this campaign. No fightback, no resilience and all the flair of a wet rag.
What has been the main variable that has changed since 2010, when Bath last secured a play-off spot? The removal of their head coach, Steve Meehan. Following the arrival of Sir Ian McGeechan, Meehan was steadily marginalised during the course of the 2010-11 season, before heading back to Brisbane in June 2011 with a year still to run on his contract.
By his own admission since that parting, Meehan was not always the easiest of coaches to work with and his man-management skills were not up to scratch during his tenure at the club. But a coaching set up is primarily judged on its results, and on that criterion Meehan has the better of McGeechan hands down.
Bruce Craig's huge investment in Bath Rugby since he bought the club two years ago has yielded the square root of zilch. Bath are a flimsy proposition when they play at The Rec, and are currently an Amlin Cup-quality team. At best.
Big things were said at the start of the season about how The Rec would once more become a terrifying place for visiting teams. Yet Saracens, Harlequins, Sale, Gloucester and Northampton have all won there so far this campaign. That is not the record of a team on the right track, particularly given that the worst of those losses – against Northampton – was the most recent.
After Saturday's non-event, all bets will be off over what happens over the next few days at Farleigh House. That sumptuous rural manor was intended by Craig to be an inspirational club HQ from which plots of European domination could be devised. The Northampton debacle will have left Craig apoplectic. I think it unlikely that he will wait until the end of the season before acting.
Although unconfirmed, I understand that there are discussions taking place about the possibility of an immediate change to the Bath set up.
That would be the right thing for the board to do. The natives in the East Stand are justly pulling their hair out, while the players – on Saturday's performance – look bewildered.
Yet, thanks to other mid-table sides also losing, there is still a chance for Bath to sneak into next season's Heineken Cup. There is still more than pride to play for, although pride will surely be the principal motivation when Bath take to the field against Sale Sharks in south Manchester a week on Friday.
It has been a season in which Bath's ability to frustrate has been exceeded only by their capacity to botch up the basics. Bruce Craig, the city and the supporters deserve better.

Steve Meehan's exit - was it inevitable once McGeechan arrived?

It may not have been a collision course but it was always going to be a path fraught with obstacles.

When Bath brought in Sir Ian McGeechan over the summer, the issue of how the coaching legend would work alongside Steve Meehan was on every supporter's lips. Would it be a dream team, or would it be a recipe for friction?

As it happens, the two have muddled through, just as Bath have muddled through so far this season.

But muddling through and rubbing along just aren't good enough for a team with such high ambition.

Head coach Meehan ruled the roost at Bath for four seasons before McGeechan arrived. Taking more of a back seat – or at least losing the right to have the final say – was never going to be easy to stomach and a man of McGeechan's experience and pedigree was only ever going to want to call the shots.

Ever since then – slowly but surely – McGeechan has assumed an increasingly tight grip on playing matters at the club.

Less than ten weeks into the season, McGeechan's title was changed from performance director to director of rugby and, for the first time, chief executive Nick Blofeld spelt out the chain of command – Meehan reported to McGeechan.

That clarification was needed because players, including skipper Luke Watson, had alluded to an underlying uncertainty over exactly what McGeechan's role was and how it fitted alongside Meehan's.

Unfortunately, that change of title did not end the uncertainty.

Privately, the odd player has admitted that there have been too many voices at training. One coach in one ear, another coach in the other.

By the turn of the year, McGeechan was taking a lead in many training sessions, cultivating a greater emphasis on forward-based play.

The game was up a week last Monday when Meehan did not attend a training session. Instead, he was in the meeting with Blofeld that would result in their decision to go their separate ways.

The head coach has been gradually eclipsed by McGeechan as the season has worn on. That is a rather sad way for the Australian's fifth year at the club to peter out – but what an eventful previous four years he had at Bath.

Meehan assumed the hot seat when the club was in a state of flux. The 'ten-man rugby' of the John Connolly era had left Bath a tedious spectacle and Brian Ashton was poached by England before he had time to get his feet under the table.

As a relative unknown, Meehan arrived at The Rec fresh from a successful spell at Stade Francais, where he had worked as assistant coach to first Nick Mallett and then Fabien Galthie.

And he sought to inject a spot of Gallic flair into Bath's plodding play. Under his tutelage, two of the club's – and the Premiership's – most devastating young ball-carriers, Matt Banahan and Nick Abendanon, quickly came to the fore.

Meehan put his side on an upward curve, taking them to the final of the European Challenge Cup in his first season and winning it the next.

Guided by World Cup-winning Springbok fly-half Butch James – the club's biggest signing for years – Meehan developed an expansive, enthralling "high risk, high reward" style of play.

Meehan's side went close to pulling off a major Heineken Cup upset in 2009 when they came within a whisker of beating Leicester in an away quarter-final. Three successive league play-off spots in 2008, 2009 and 2010 also cemented Bath's reputation as consistent title contenders – but they never quite managed to make the next step from contenders to finalists.

After Blofeld was appointed as Bath's new CEO two years ago, he was quick to praise Meehan's attacking guile.

"The biggest compliment I can pay Steve is to express my admiration at Bath's ability to unlock defences," Blofeld told me.

"It's incomparable – and that's the most important part of rugby."

But for all the importance of slicing defences open, there remained a lingering sense that Bath lacked the winner's mentality of a Leicester. They were the Premiership's pretty boys but needed to know when to play ugly.

To his credit, Meehan solidered on through some very dark days indeed, operating under high levels of stress. The opening months of last season must have left him pining for his native Gold Coast.

In the aftermath of a season that saw Bath lose five senior players to drug allegations, the squad was riven by discord. Bath struggled to find their feet but, when they finally did, they set off at 100mph.

There may have been a few whispers about Meehan's man-management techniques but the way the 2009-10 season was transformed was a remarkable and defining moment of his tenure.

Smart and wry, Meehan is the longest-serving head coach in the Premiership and with five years at the helm (or four, if you exclude this one) he's arguably had a fair crack of the whip.

But it has not been a happy finale for Meehan, who has seen his power at the club gradually ebb away over the season.

Even so, the club is doing the right and proper thing in keeping him on until the end of the season. Such a servant deserves the dignity of an orderly departure.

Life's a Beech at Bath

Loosehead prop Charlie Beech will be moving from London Wasps to Bath Rugby this summer. He is Sir Ian McGeechan's son-in-law and McGeechan is, of course, Bath's director of rugby.
But it looks like he'll be getting a far from comfortable ride.

The tale of Meehan and Sir Ian

Here, belatedly, is my column from The Bath Chronicle, published on February 17. I'm sticking it on my blog now because Bath's spanking of Northampton on Saturday only served to underscore some of the points. Cheers.

When it was confirmed over the summer that Sir Ian McGeechan would be coming to Bath Rugby, an obvious question was how he would fit in with the existing coaching staff.

Or, rather, how the existing coaching staff would fit around him.

McGeechan has accomplished so much in so many places that his appointment by new owner Bruce Craig got plenty of tongues wagging about how exactly he would work alongside head coach Steve Meehan, a man who had put his individual stamp on the club over the previous three seasons.

I think the club would probably admit there has been a certain 'suck it and see' aspect to the way McGeechan has worked alongside the existing coaching set-up and it's clear his role has evolved since he joined.
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When he arrived, his official title was performance director and, while both McGeechan and the club could furnish reasonable explanations of what that role entailed, in my mind at least there remained a few little question marks about the command structure and how exactly Meehan and McGeechan would dovetail.

At the end of November, that title was tweaked by chief executive Nick Blofeld to the more conventional one of director of rugby.

While the club made little of that change of title at the time, saying it was done merely for clarification, I think the more traditional split between director of rugby and head coach has helped McGeechan settle into the club – and the club settle into life with McGeechan.

There is now a clearer, more explicit chain of command off the pitch, and on it there is a greater sense of purpose. Since that change of title, McGeechan has rolled up his sleeves with the pack and, alongside forwards coach Martin Haag, has wrought something of a transformation.

Friday's away win at Sale underscored how the Bath pack is on top of its game again, although the real test will come when the grisly Northampton forwards rumble onto The Rec.

I've also detected a greater sense of assurance and quiet purpose emanating from both McGeechan and Meehan in recent weeks, as though they have a better handle on things and know precisely where they're going.

Results help lift the mood, of course, and Bath have won six out of their last seven games. Even so, I sense the greater sense of assurance stems from more than just results.

I suppose the lesson to learn is that, even the best in the business can take time to bed in.

And that can apply to players too. Bath back-rowers Luke Watson, Lewis Moody and Simon Taylor are superb players and have put in strong individual performances at times.

But, as Lee Mears pointed out this week, they are all in their first full season at the club and it takes time for players to build up an understanding of how their team-mates play.

Luckily for Bath, that understanding seems to be flourishing at just the right time for a tilt at the play-offs.

World-class basics? Not at the moment, Sir Ian

Here's my column from today's Bath Chronicle. More stuff along these lines here

Sir Ian McGeechan, Bath Rugby's performance director, recently gave a talk to business leaders in the South West in which he stressed the importance of doing "world-class basics".

Funnily enough, that's what Bath Rugby need to start doing, too – getting the game's basic skills and strategies absolutely nailed.

We all know what a devastatingly potent force Bath can be when the side's top gear – and brain – are engaged but those fireworks will not be achieved until the nuts and bolts are sorted.

And at the moment they're looking a bit rusty.

Bath's handling against Gloucester was atrocious. It was much improved against Biarritz, although the usually rock-solid Michael Claassens was uncharacteristically wayward on occasion and balls did begin to hit the deck with perturbing frequency as the second half wore on.

Elsewhere, the synchronisation between thrower and jumpers was better at the line-out on Sunday but that step forward was nullified by the two costly penalties the pack conceded for obstruction at the set-piece.

But it's not just the practical skills at Bath that need a touch of coaching WD-40. The team's mental focus needs work, as well as decision-making at critical times.

Bath have a glut of players with leadership experience but something is not right at the moment. That was proved by the staggering lack of nous that bewitched the side when a match-winning dropped goal opportunity presented itself in the dying minutes against Biarritz.

There have been other poor decisions this season too. Opting for a scrum on Northampton's five-metre line at Franklin's Gardens rather than taking the three points was one (talk about a provocation), while opting for a stoppage-time penalty goal attempt against London Irish rather than kicking the ball dead was another (my, how that could have backfired).

And then there was the Gloucester match, which was really just one jamboree of bad decisions.

Too often so far this season, Bath haven't been at the races at the start of the second-half. There was a total shutdown against Northampton after the break and a plug also seemed to have been pulled when Bath returned to the field on Sunday.

Few sides will ever sustain a cracking tempo for a full 80 minutes – even the best sides encounter spells where the game goes flat for a few minutes.

And, to their credit, Bath have managed to piece together some strong periods of play, the opening ten minutes against Biarritz being one such example.

But the consistency isn't there, not only from game to game, but from quarter to quarter.

So get that tracksuit on, Sir Ian. You've still got plenty of work to do in ensuring Bath's basics really are world-class.

Pride in the Bath jersey

Sorry about the delay in posting this - family matters have intervened of late. But here's my take on Lions legend Sir Ian McGeechan's arrival at Bath Rugby.
And I expect more canny moves from new Bath owner Bruce Craig in the next few weeks. He's fast assembling an on and off-field set up - both in terms of personnel and facilities - that will be the envy of every club in the land, if not the universe.