Last season’s top two kicked off the season in opposition to last season’s bottom two. Bath duly completed the expected, joining Northampton with a bonus-point win to open their account.
The team the Saints succeeded as champions last season travelled to the Stoop to remind Harlequins how much more they have to work on if they are to return to the sort of form that made them champions not so long ago.
The home team took to the field with a host of absentees, it is true. No Marcus Smith; no Alex Dombrandt; no George Furbank, new signing with a shiny champion’s gong around his neck. They were bright as they always are, but the substance of their visitors was too much in the end, leavened by a flash of genius by Argentinian Santi Carreras that will live long in the memory of all who witnessed it. To boast that sort of muscle, to boast that sort of genius, Bath will take some beating again this season.
Bath had the bonus point by half-time, which felt a bit harsh on a Quins team that had plenty of bright moments. Their challenge, it seems again, will be to find the composure to fill in the stretches of time between them with something substantial.
As it is, they flare up from time to time with a flash of brilliance, which sometimes hurts the opposition, sometimes doesn’t. And there is not a lot in between. Bath have more in the way of relentless intensity. And they have Carreras. And Finn Russell, of course. But of the two geniuses it has been Carreras turning heads of late, apparently playing for stretches in training as if he were, to quote his coach, the best player in the world.
And the cruellest turning point of the first half was courtesy of a moment that might as well have been in training it was so casually, instinctively of another planet, might as well have been conjured by Maradona or Messi.
The score was two tries apiece on the half-hour, when Quins had just conjured another of their sparks and were trying to make it tell. Tyrone Green was honing in on Carreras, the last man, with Oscar Beard outside him. Nothing wrong with the pass. But a dilemma for the last man in these circumstances is always: ‘Do I stick my hand out for the interception and risk a penalty try if I knock it on?’
Carreras supplied the answer. Use your foot. Green’s pass fizzed across him, and he volleyed it sweetly into the air, coolly ran on and reached one hand out over the touchline to scoop the ball out of the air. And on he ran to the try-line some 75 yards away.
Did we mention he is also seriously quick? That meant it was to be Bath, not Quins, who would be the first to score a third try. Suddenly, it was 21-10 to the visitors. More punishing still, they muscled their way over a breakdown to force another penalty of their hosts, which they sent to the corner, whence they scored that fourth try, by Dan Frost at the back of the advancing maul, much as Dan du Preez had earlier opened the scoring on his Bath debut. Joe Cokanasiga hit a hard line for Bath’s second, while Harlequins had kept in the match with two pieces of quicksilver brilliance, first by Will Porter, then when Chandler Cunningham-South ran home after Beard’s turn at the brilliant.
More brilliance upon the resumption had Quins their third. This time Cadan Murley was away doing his thing down the left. His run established the position, Pedro Delgado’s rumble round the fringes finished the job. Quins seemed happier all of a sudden, tails up, but their case was not helped by the yellow card shown to Sam Riley a few minutes later, for an illegal tackle on Beno Obano.
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Bath hardly made it tell. They meandered a little themselves in the third quarter, but when you have set-piece weaponry it is only a matter of time before you get a chance to use it. And so they did, putting the game beyond their hosts in the last 10 minutes, scoring from a driven lineout for the third time, when Ewan Richards finished after Russell had sent a penalty to the corner.
Quins eagerly pushed for a bonus point at least, but they had been well beaten and did not seem quite to believe. Another attack petered out somewhere near Bath’s 22. Plenty more to come from Quins, no doubt, but for now the usual suspects are flexing their muscles into a new campaign.
