Category: Rugby Union

Flanker Ted Hill has been called ‘a freak’ by his captain as the 26-year-old waits for another chance with England

Is it a bird or a plane? No, it’s probably “SuperTed”. If Bath win this year’s Premiership final the chances are their rangy, athletic flanker Ted Hill will have played a prominent role. This week his captain, Ben Spencer, called him a “freak” and various seasoned judges have compared him with illustrious former back-rowers ranging from Kieran Read and Jerome Kaino to Pierre Spies and Tom Croft.

During this year’s Six Nations Maro Itoje suggested similarities between the 26-year-old and “Captain America or Superman” and suggested he was “a man carved out of Greek stone”. Bath’s head coach, Johann van Graan, believes likewise. “I think he’s one of the best players in the league and his athletic ability is special. There’s not a lot he can’t do, really.”

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• Fly-half endured torrid season at Racing 92

• Farrell agrees summer return including a pay cut

Owen Farrell has agreed an immediate return to Saracens after a torrid season with Racing 92. The 33-year-old former England captain will join his boyhood club as a player-coach this summer on a five-year deal.

Saracens have secured Farrell’s signing after agreeing a compensation package with Racing 92 of about €200,000 (£170m) – significantly less than the €500,000 paid by the French club last year – and reaching a deal over personal terms. Farrell had signed a two-year deal with the Top 14 side but endured an injury-hit season and informed the club of his desire to return to the Premiership towards the end of the campaign.

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There was a time when the team playing at the Rec were the dominant force in English club rugby and there are signs they may be on the rise once again

The first thing anyone who cares says when they find out you’re a sports journalist is to ask whether or not you were at whichever big game was on that weekend. The second, after you’ve explained, apologetically, that you don’t actually follow football, is usually an awkward pause. There are all sorts of reasons why you may prefer any other sort of sport, but after 20 years of variations on this conversation, I’ve learned that unless you want to come across like someone who insists actually they prefer art-house cinema and free jazz, it’s best to have a straightforward explanation. Mine is that I grew up in Bath.

They do play football in Bath, out at Twerton Park. The club have never been in the Football League (right now they’re in National League South), and most weeks they draw a crowd of around a thousand. Which isn’t so very many more than you’ll find crowded around the stone balustrades of the city’s parade gardens, trying to peer across the weir and see into the Rec when the rugby club have a home game. Bath’s football has always been bad. But in the 80s and 90s Bath’s rugby was so good that the brand still stands for something, even after they have been mediocre for a large part of the past 30 years.

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Team featuring Jeremy Guscott and Mike Catt won Bath’s most recent title before professional era changed the game

It doesn’t take long to realise that one of England’s greatest attacking minds is still as sharp as ever. Asked what is keeping him busy at the moment, Brian Ashton, now 78, shoots back: “Staying alive.” There are many ways to emphasise how long it has been since Bath won the title but a two-word riposte from the man who led them to the league and cup double in 1995-96 does it better than most.

It is well documented that the dawn of professionalism was not kind to Bath, how it both enabled their rivals to catch up and derailed the country’s dominant side in the following years. As the former full-back Jon Callard has put it: “Bath got lost in professionalism, sometimes players forgot the value of the shirt.” In the final throes of the amateur era, however, Bath were the trailblazers.

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While financial instability and welfare dominate discussions, Premiership attendances are firmly on the up

The final week of every domestic season is always an indicator of rugby’s underlying health. Are supporters crawling over their grandmothers in their haste to buy a finals ticket? Is the entertainment value of the product trending upwards year on year? And are there collective signs of rising positivity among players, tournament organisers and fans alike?

These are especially relevant questions right now amid all the exciting/delusional (take your pick) chatter about a possible breakaway global franchise league. And before we contemplate this year’s answers let’s hope those looking to flog the concept of a Formula One-style circus featuring the world’s top players were watching last Friday night’s game in Bath.

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• R360 targeting ‘best of the best’ 300 male players

• Premiership does not see franchise league as threat

A leading executive at TNT Sports has dismissed the proposed R360 breakaway league as “delusional” while Premiership executives have played down the rebels’ threat, insisting rugby “doesn’t need pop-ups”.

Confirming that R360 has not approached TNT Sports about its plans for a globetrotting league that targets the world’s best players on lucrative contracts, Andrew Georgiou – president and managing director of WBD Sports Europe – joined Premiership Rugby in questioning the commercial and economic viability of the breakaway league.

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• Bath 34-20 Bristol

• Nerveless Russell converts four second-half tries

Bath’s oval-ball custodians have spent years trying – and failing – to construct a team to match the striking nature of their home city. Now, finally, they are within 80 minutes of claiming their first domestic league title since 1995-96 after a storming second-half revival put paid to a gallant Bristol side who had led by seven points at half-time.

If the outcome was still theoretically up in the air at the interval there was not a shred of doubt by the hour mark, Bath launching a blistering fusillade that yielded four converted tries without reply and underlined their status as short-priced favourites to lift the Premiership trophy at Twickenham next Saturday. “This team is tough to beat,” confirmed their head coach, Johann van Graan. “Bristol asked some questions but effort-wise I couldn’t be prouder. That is what it takes to get to Twickenham.”

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Three second-half tries at the Rec took the home side to the final

7 mins. Alfie Barbeary revs up for one of his trademark boom-boom carries from the drop-out return, but he slips over as he and Genge are about to come together with such force it could’ve created a singularity that would swallow the entire west country. Instead it’s a knock-on, which is probably best for all concerned.

4 mins. From the lineout the Bath forwards set to work after a big carry by Ted Hill moves them to within ten metres. The try looks inevitable but Bristol do a great job to get under the ball and hold it up over the line which will allow the Bears to kick a long drop-kick from under the posts to relieve the early pressure.

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The tactically brilliant fly-half will attempt to overcome his former club Leicester in Saturday’s Premiership semi-final

Should Leicester fail to reach this year’s Premiership final they will have been floored by a familiar foe. George Ford spent two spells totalling nine years at Welford Road and made his Tigers first-team debut as a 16-year-old. It says everything about his enduring desire and dedication that, aged 32 and clad in the blue of Sale Sharks, his tactical decision-making grows sharper by the year.

Whether he is kicking teams to death or slicing them apart with his deft short passing game, the GF menu of fly-half skills remains rich and varied. His fellow squad members all regard him as a coach in waiting, so good is he at steering them around the field and managing pressure situations. When Michael Cheika, Leicester’s head coach, expressed bafflement at Ford’s omission from this year’s British and Irish Lions squad, he was by no means alone.

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Unsung inside centre James Williams typifies Bears’ graft in emotional build-up to Friday’s Premiership semi-final against their bitter foes

When the Rugby Football Union launched its rebrand of the Championship last month, Henry Pollock was put front and centre, made the poster boy by virtue of his five loan appearances for Bedford Blues. You can hardly blame the union for trying to capitalise on the hype but there are better examples of players who epitomise the strengths of the second tier.

None more so than James Williams, Bristol’s inside-centre who at 28 has taken the road less travelled to the Premiership semi-finals. Williams began his career at Birmingham Moseley in National League One before moving to Hartpury. He joined Worcester in 2018 but managed just one appearance, signed with Sale a year later and appeared just three times and when Covid hit he was released by the Sharks.

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Gloucester’s silky backs and Bath’s fearsome forwards feature heavily among our best players of the year

Santiago Carreras (Gloucester) Plenty of quality contenders – Sale’s Joe Carpenter, Northampton’s George Furbank and Bristol’s Rich Lane – and I was also tempted to hand Alex Goode a well-deserved retirement gift. But Carreras has been an absolute joy to watch and central to Gloucester’s attacking reinvention. For a snapshot check out the try he helped to start and then finished against Sale at Kingsholm in January. The prospect of him linking up with Finn Russell at Bath next season is mouthwatering.

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Free-scoring Bears face Harlequins knowing a slip-up could open the door for local rivals Gloucester

There will be tries. That is hardly a revolutionary prediction in a sport that has long since rained down on us the 21st century’s manna of entertainment at all costs, but even by those standards this weekend’s last round of the Premiership promises bounty.

The science of prediction is at best hit and miss, but one blind alley all too many “experts” get lost down is consideration of tactics, gameplans and the like, when all that really matters is a team’s motivation. Purity of desire is a special ingredient in a side’s prospects for any individual match. This weekend we have five matches, and they all might be summarised as a team with something to play for versus a team with nothing.

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