Thursday, 14 May 2009

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.

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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.

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