Matt makes his mark

Matt Banahan made his mark for England during the summer Tests against Argentina - and now he's making another kind of mark.
As this picture shows, the chunky winger has picked up another tattoo to complement the body art on his already heavily painted arms and chest.
It looks like, thanks to Banahan, the Bath backs aren't going to be short of war paint for the coming campaign.
I heard that getting a tattoo was a painful experience. But, look closely, and it seems it's the tattoo artist who's in agony, not big Matt.

Watching the Lions - the Welsh way

This is a tad out of date now - but see previous post

'Will sell my wife for beer' screamed the bloke's T-shirt in front of me as I settled down to watch the opening Lions Test in a Pembrokeshire rugby club.

Normally it would have been an act of boneheaded stupidity for an English tourist – complete with slightly-too-red sun tan and sandy swimming shorts – to stroll alone into a Welsh rugby club. But this was Lions time, an opportunity for Celts and Englishmen to call a truce, sit side by side, holler at the ref and hurl abuse at the opposing Southern Hemisphere side.

And boy did these Welsh lads know how to hurl abuse – all of it delivered in a sing-song manner about an octave higher than my ears are used to.

And then there were the barmaids. Let's just say the one who served me had the sort of formidable frame that would have troubled even Tendai Mtawarira in the scrum.

Through the mist of beer, blue language and sighs at the Lions' missed opportunities, however, a thought involving Bath Rugby arose – and it was all courtesy of the beer monster in front of me.

If this guy would be happy to exchange his spouse for a crate of lager – as his T-shirt declared – then what would Bath Rugby be willing to exchange for a piece of top-tier silverware?

In order to secure that elusive Guinness Premiership title or Heineken Cup, would the club be willing to forego its two captains, its good name and its short-term stability?

For it seems to me that, paradoxically, the bad news that has poleaxed the club over the summer months could well yield good results.

The club's good name may well have been tarnished in the short-term because of all the allegations and resignations that have been flying around, but the fruit that grow from this bitter tree may well turn out to be sweet.

And there is evidence that this is already happening.

Before Michael Lipman's departure, Bath had some fine back row players but were seriously lacking in depth. Now they have added South African international Luke Watson and Australia A flanker Julian Salvi – both of them proven leaders – to their battalion of loose forwards, instantly giving the back row a meatier, smarter appearance.

For all his brilliance, one Michael Lipman does not equal a Luke Watson and a Julian Salvi. Ergo, Bath have done well out of their captain's departure.

Trauma can bring you closer together or tear you apart. And the hope for Bath fans has to be that the club's summer of discontent will have brought the remaining players closer together.

If that has happened – and head coach Steve Meehan seems confident that it has – then Bath could well be hungrier, more focused and more fired up for the 2009-10 campaign then they were this time last year.

Let's just hope the thoughts prompted by that misogynistic T-shirt turn out to be true.

For more, visit www.thisisbath.co.uk/bathrugby

Tom Bradshaw was away - but is now back again

Apologies for lack of postings of late. I've been on my hols. Thinking that the summer would be a period of peace and quiet on the Bath Rugby scene, I'd booked a couple of trips away. Of course, it's turned out to be anything other than quiet at The Rec, what with drugs rows, frantic summer signings and the like. Anyway, normal service should now be resumed. In a jiffy I'll post my column from last week's Bath Chronicle...

Bath Rugby: Reasons to be cheerful

It's been a proud week for Bath Rugby. And I defy anyone to say I'm being insincere.

Last week was a real shocker for the club – and that's putting it mildly. But the past few days have actually yielded plenty of reasons for Bath fans to be cheerful and even optimistic about next season.

Just look at how many players the club has away on international duty. – and, more importantly, how well they are playing.

Wing Matt Banahan took his debut Test appearance for England in his (giant) stride when he ran out against Argentina last weekend, opening the scoring and earning praise from the notoriously fastidious Martin Johnson.

Almost as important as size and speed at international level are composure and attitude, and the Jersey Juggernaut seems to have those qualities by the shovel-load.

Talking of size, Bath's incoming 19st 3lb prop, Davey Wilson, also impressed Johnson during the Argentina match at Old Trafford. Matt Stevens may have been a massive loss to Bath Rugby, but head coach Steve Meehan's decision to sign this 24-year-old Geordie, who hopefully still has his best years ahead of him, looks increasingly astute with every passing week.

And while Wilson and Banahan could well force themselves into contention for next year's Six Nations, there are also encouraging signs to be taken from the way Bath's England Saxons contingent is bearing up in Colorado.

Stuart Hooper has been made the England A team's captain, while the remainder of the Bath cohort – Nick Abendanon, David Flatman and Peter Short – were all given a place in the Saxons' starting line-up for the victorious opener against Argentina Jaguars.

Hooper's selection as Saxons skipper is significant, as much for Bath fans as it is for England fans.

Prior to this summer's Churchill Cup campaign, the lock/back row already had plenty of leadership experience thanks to his tenure as Leeds Carnegie skipper before his switch to Bath. Now his leadership credentials have been given another boost.

With Michael Lipman and Alex Crockett having abruptly left the club, Bath need a proven leader and unifier as their new skipper.

And Hooper's exposure this summer to the captaincy at representative level could well tip the balance in his favour in Steve Meehan's mind.

Away from the Americas, Bath players Jonny Faamatuainu (Manu Samoa), Josh Ovens (England Under 20) and, of course, Lee Mears (British & Irish Lions) have been doing their club proud.

Far from their minds being frazzled by the distracting events back home, Bath's players are proving themselves on the big stage – and for that deserve a pat on the back.

Whether that form can be recreated once they return to the inevitably unsettled environment of their club, however, only time will tell.

It's time for Bath Rugby to meet The Parents

I never thought I'd write a rugby column that invoked a Lee Mears quote and a line from the cheesy – but hugely entertaining – American comedy Meet The Parents in the same breath.

But here goes.

It may have sounded like a piece of management-speak when it first came out of his lips, but when Mears said yesterday that the disciplinary hearings being handed out to a number of Bath players were beyond his "circle of control", he actually had a good point.

The outcome of those hearings will be made public next week. And until then, it's pointless to fret and stress about what the conclusion will be, especially when you're in the southern hemisphere and trying to concentrate on representing the British Lions.

But it's not the circle of control that the Bath camp should be most worried about. It's another circle – the circle of trust – that carries the most significance.

As Jack Burns, the notoriously hard to please father-in-law-to-be makes clear in Meet The Parents, you're only inside the circle of trust once you've proven your commitment to a family. And once you fall out of that circle of trust, you're out for good.

The problem that Bath could well he faced with, even after the outcomes of the disciplinary hearings are made public, is that not all the players will be sure whether they belong inside or outside the club's family or not, let alone the circle of trust.

When a trauma of this magnitude hits a club – with a number of players facing allegations about their behaviour – the ripples of crisis can continue to lap at the squad's collective psyche for months afterwards.

Professional rugby players and coaches – indeed, professionals in any sport – often talk about how it's the psychological edge that can tip the balance in their favour in a particular contest. The challenge for Bath now is to devise a way of handling the fall-out from the hearings in a way that doesn't batter their morale, which is bound to be pretty low now anyway.

For that reason, the action that the management takes – when it does finally take it – needs to be decisive.

If there are any 'rotten elements', as honorary club president Jack Rowell puts it, then they all – to a man – need to be weeded out and chucked out for good.

There can, surely, be no room for 'another chance', not after what happened with Matt Stevens in January.

And once that decisive action has been taken, a line needs to be drawn in the sand so that the Bath squad can get on with the healing process as swiftly as possible.

Without a line in the sand there can be no possibility of restoring trust at the club. And trust – between player and player, and player and management – is what's desperately going to be needed after such a protracted, deep- probing inquiry.

Appointing a captain is always a crucial decision for a head coach, but the decision takes on supreme importance for Steve Meehan when you have had such a monumental quake reduce your close season to rubble.

Meehan has indicated that he will once again seek to appoint joint captains for the 2009-10 season. The men he needs filling these roles must, more than ever, be unifiers able to lead a group out of a crisis. Meehan will face many tough decisions over the next few weeks, but get this call wrong and the club's trauma may be long-lasting.

For more of my columns that have appeared in The Bath Chronicle, click here

Harrison walks The Plank

Bath Rugby's Justin Harrison has left the club with immediate effect for 'personal reasons' (although this just happens to coincide with a club investigation into ill-discipline on a night out). Here I reflect on the combative second row's controversial season with the blue, black and whites

"Uncompromising" is how Bath Rugby's forwards coach, Mark Bakewell, described Justin Harrison when the Australian lock announced in December that he was to extend his contract at The Rec by a year.

Just how uncompromising Harrison is has been revealed by his actions of the past few days. His lawyer and agent got the ball rolling for him to leave the club with immediate effect – just as the club launched an inquiry to get to the bottom of Bath players' behaviour in London during an end-of-season blow-out.

'Uncompromising' doesn't quite succeed in capturing the sheer on-field aggro that the ex-Wallaby brought to the pitch during his brief time at Bath.

He was a man who, from the off, made it quite clear that he wanted to ruffle plenty of feathers in the Guinness Premiership. If fisticuffs were about to break out, then Harrison was in the thick of it.

His pugnacious approach culminated in him scrapping with ex-Bath skipper Steve Borthwick during the final game of the regular season against Saracens. This encounter led to Harrison being cited for alleged eye-gouging – a charge that was subsequently thrown out by a RFU disciplinary panel.

When Harrison joined Bath from Ulster for the beginning of the 2008/09 season, there were many raised eyebrows. At 34, many felt he was a little long in the tooth and would be something of a passenger during the campaign.

But the Australian defied those early critics, playing in 31 of 33 matches during the season. A pivotal moment in capturing Bath supporters' hearts came with a fearless performance against Leicester at The Rec in November, when the Australian played on despite losing consciousness at least twice.

For all his on-field aggression, however, Harrison was a different character when it came to conducting interviews with the media. On such occasions, he came across as contemplative, carrying the air of a philosopher.

"I wouldn't say it's been a distraction for me personally," he said when the Matt Stevens cocaine scandal broke in January. "It has all the ingredients of possibly providing one, but my life operates alongside rugby, not because of it.

"Most importantly, my character and integrity has been enhanced by having been associated with Matt Stevens.

"In three minutes of television interview he showed he has an enormous amount of courage and character. That's something that I couldn't hope to summon in my darkest hour and he has, somehow.

"My role as a rugby player for Bath is to perform as well as I can on Sunday and get myself in a position to do that. But my role as a human being, and as a mate of Matt's, is to support him in anyway I can."

But there could always be a hint of menace in what he said, even when it was meant as a joke.

Commenting on the foot injury of his Bath team mate and former England lock Danny Grewcock, Harrison remarked wryly to me in February: "I spent most of my career trying to injure Danny – and now I'm wishing that he wasn't."

The thing is, both parts of that sentence were probably true.

The Sydney-born lock, who made 34 test appearances for Australia, came to Bath with some baggage.

In March 2005, while playing for the New South Wales Waratahs, Harrison admitted racially abusing Chumani Booi in a Super 12 match in South Africa.

In the subsequent tribunal, Harrison issued a sufficiently heartfelt apology for the panel to suspend a $20,000 fine. During his mea culpa, Harrison told the panel he wanted to do the "best to redeem whatever irreversible damage I have done to my own reputation."

Given the suddenness of his departure from The Rec in such unhappy circumstances, it may well be that this Jekyll and Hyde personality will once again have to work hard to redeem himself.

To read my latest column on theturmoil at Bath Rugby, click here

It's high time Bath Rugby were lifted out of this training limbo

From the moment Leicester unveiled their squad ahead of the Guinness Premiership semi on Saturday, I always felt things looked a bit ominous for Bath.

That Richard Cockerill had the confidence to field an essentially unchanged side from the one that had just endured a marathon Heineken Cup semi-final against Cardiff spoke volumes about the players' fitness, durability and appetite for victory.

Then there was Leicester's subs' bench, jam-packed with internationals and brimming with menace.

With Bath plagued by injuries to a cohort of senior players – James, Lipman, Browne, Grewcock – it almost looked a bit of an uneven contest.

But Bath aren't only mismatched on the pitch at the moment. They are somewhat mismatched off it, too.

While Leicester Tigers crack on with developing Welford Road into a super-stadium, Bath labour on with sub-standard facilities – facilities that most clubs would be embarrassed of.

Bath Rugby chief executive Bob Calleja is all too aware of how inadequate many of the club's facilities are, describing the Kronenbourg Stand at The Rec to me recently as looking "like a cowshed".

Lambridge Training Ground, with its ramshackle hut and invariably defaced sign, is also a sorry sight, although in a glorious location.

And that's why, as we reveal in today's Chronicle, the club is absolutely determined to push on with developing a supremely well-equipped training base at Lambridge that, if built, would be the envy of every other side in the land.

The plans are ready; the money is in place; the club is anxious to crack on and improve the site.

But, as ever in Bath, things are not as simple as that. There is always a 20lbspanner lurking nearby, ready to be lobbed violently into the works.

The particular spanner in question here is this. Bath Rugby will not be able to push on with improving Lambridge unless councillors on Bath and North East Somerset Council give the green light for a new park-and-ride site to be developed at Bathampton Meadows. Until that happens, there is always the prospect that B&NES will return to its original plan of buying up Lambridge and building the park-and-ride on there instead.

Unbelievably, the idea of developing a park-and-ride at Lambridge was mooted almost two decades ago. Yet there is still no clear future for the site.

This is a fiasco. That Lambridge remains in limbo to this day should be a huge embarrassment to the elected representatives and full-time public officials who, over the years, have been paid out of the public purse to sort it out.

Over the past two decades there have been various planning applications and various false dawns, all of which petered out amid an orgy of pen-pushing, spineless indecision and a lack of political will.

Bob Calleja should be knighted – no, beatified – for his patience. I'd have stormed the Guildhall with Bath Rugby flags by now, baying for blood as I went.

The political process has failed Bath Rugby and made a laughing stock of the local authority. But B&NES has an opportunity to redeem itself.

Next Wednesday – May 20 – its development control committee will meet to discuss the application for the park-and-ride site at Bathampton Meadows. Councillors will have the chance to set the ball rolling for this long overdue project, and in so doing give Bath Rugby a firm framework within which to improve its training facilities.

I hope the council takes decisive action. But experience points the other way and suggests a deferment will be the order of the day, condemning the club and Lambridge to more limbo.

Bath Rugby's hopes of developing The Rec are already being delayed by ponderous, obfuscating officialdom, so the club deserves a break on the Lambridge front.

Bath Rugby is one of the jewels in Bath's glittering crown. It's about time it was treated by some in this city with something other than contempt.

This post is taken from my weekly column in The Bath Chronicle. To read more of my whinging diatribes, as well as a column by Bath Rugby prop Duncan Bell, just click on this sentence.