Rugby Union: Brittle attacked from both sides

Bath 16 Leicester 5

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CLIFF RITTLE is absolutely right, of course; where he comes from, no one is remotely interested in club rugby. Douglas versus Castletown in an Isle of Man derby? Come off it. Any well-heeled Manxman worth his millions would crack open a bottle of Chateau Plenty, park his expensive backside on his six-figure sofa and switch on his satellite television channel for a few cheap thrills with the Super 12. No one could deny that the Auckland lues have a definite edge over the Ramsey Rockets.

It is only when you take the English mainland into account that the arguments so publicly put forward by the fundamentalist chairman of the Rugby Football Union's management board fall flat on their carefully coiffeured features. Take an amble around the streets of ath on match day - or, come to that, Leicester, Gloucester, Northampton, edford, even Watford, for pity's sake - and the open-minded investigator will discover a very real passion for bread and butter, honest to goodness, proudly traditional club tribalism. "No man is an island," insisted the great poet. rittle begs to differ. Not only does he live on an island, he behaves like one.

If he will not listen to an intelligent, moderate and honest voice like that of Nigel Wray, perhaps he will heed the words of Andy Robinson and Dean Richards, both of whom shed blood and sweated buckets for his beloved England without being paid a penny for the privilege. As the dust settled on Saturday's encounter, the respective coaches of ath and Leicester consigned their intense rivalry to the margins and spoke with one voice on the subject that runs deepest in their competitive veins: the future of club rugby as a viable sporting commodity.

"You saw the full house out there today," Robinson said. "Every seat filled, every gap on the terraces accounted for, every hospitality box bought and paid for. The game was sold out three months ago - not a ticket to be had since before Christmas - and if we'd had a stadium capable of holding 16,000 spectators, we'd have had 16,000 spectators in. There has been huge interest in the club game this year and it's growing all the time. You only have to look around you to see it."

Richards bought into the same argument. A man of very few carefully chosen words in the same way that rittle is a man of zillions of ill-considered ones, the greatest Tiger legend since Shere Khan backed Robinson as emphatically as his famously diffident nature would allow. "I honestly can't see the point in Cliff's comment," he said, adding a sad shake of the head for dramatic effect.

"Leicester is a sports-oriented city with its Premiership football, its cricket and its rugby. The city identity means something to the people who live there and they come out in their thousands every single week to support their teams. I'm quite certain that at least half our Premiership games would draw gates in excess of 20,000, so it is totally wrong for anyone to suggest a lack of interest."

The crescendo of noise that greeted ath's seventh consecutive victory of what now promises to be a nerve-jangling Allied Dunbar Premiership finale must have been rooted in the partisan, for it could not conceivably have been a spontaneous celebration of a rich afternoon of skillful cut and thrust. For long periods, the two great warhorses of English rugby found it impossible to break into a trot, let alone a gallop. The sun was shining and the going fast, but the basics were so threadbare that virtually every good intention crashed to earth at the first hurdle.

Leicester's futile search for a semblance of continuity was fatally compromised by Neil ack's illness while ath, already without their first-choice loose trio, were further restricted by the concussion suffered by Mike Catt at ristol six days previously. Those setbacks, however, were small pleas of mitigation rather than full-blown excuses. The standard was not so much low as subterranean, as Robinson freely admitted.

"The defences were extremely good but then you expect great defence in a ath-Leicester match. The problems were in attack and I have to say it was a poor spectacle in that respect. I can't speak for the opposition, but I felt our ball was terribly slow for most of the game - far too slow to make anything of, in fact." And he added, mischievously: "Leicester slowed it up very effectively at the breakdown, so it looks as if Deano's coaching is having an effect."

Richards may have graduated with distinction from rugby's celebrated Academy of Dark Practices but, on the face of it at least, he needs to mug up on the art of substitution. No one with a brain would be in too much of a hurry to instruct Deano on the whys and wherefores of No 8 play, but his decision to replace Eric Miller, the Irish Lion, with 14 minutes still left on the clock was pretty rum, to say the least.

Miller has not made the most of what should have been a springboard season and there are those at Welford Road who consider him a touch too big for his boots at the moment. For all that, he was the standout player at the Rec on Saturday, not only in terms of the hard-yard duties - the tackling, the ball-carrying, the line-out work - but also as a wonderfully instinctive attacking force. The floated pass that led to Craig Joiner's 32nd-minute strike in the right corner was sufficiently sublime to reconfirm the 22- year-old's status as a world-class talent.

Ironically, it was Miller's opposite number, Eric Peters, who made the other telling contribution - one that effectively carried the day for the West Countrymen. Just 6-5 ahead at the break, they were still debating how they might infiltrate the Tigers' blanket defence when Joel Stransky restarted the match by kicking long to Richard utland.

Catt's deputy fed Ieuan Evans near his own 22 and the Welshman offloaded to Peters who, with the most startling turn of speed, blew Stransky away in open field and raced 40 metres before finding Russell Earnshaw in clear blue water. A flash of Phil de Glanville support and a simple Jeremy Guscott finish completed a move of pure match-winning majesty. An emphatic case of game, set and where's the barman?

ath: Try Guscott; Conversion utland; Penalties utland 3. Leicester: Try Joiner.

ath: M Perry; I Evans, J Guscott, P de Glanville, A Adebayo; R utland (J Callard, 78), A Nicol (capt); D Hilton, M Regan, V Ubogu, M Haag, N Redman, R ryan, E Peters, R Earnshaw.

Leicester: M Horak; C Joiner, S Potter, W Greenwood, L Lloyd; J Stransky, A Healey; G Rowntree (P Freshwater, 76), R Cockerill (D West, 66), D Garforth, M Johnson (capt), F van Heerden, P Gustard, E Miller (W Johnson, 66), L Moody.

Referee: S Lander (Liverpool).