Rugby Union: Strugglers paying a high price

rugby union: Leicester maintain their pursuit of Bath as international demands blight the resumption of the league programme

Bath Recreation Ground may nestle amid Georgian splendour but its capacity is no more than 8,500 and that a Bath v Northampton match was not sold out was testimony - in a manner of speaking both silent and eloquent - to the depredations of the nat ional team.

Saints reputedly have one of the biggest travelling supports in the English game but take Tim Rodber and Martin Bayfield out of their pack, as Jack Rowell had done a week before England play Ireland, and some Northampton followers evidently did not consider the journey worthwhile.

As it transpired, arrival was slightly better than travelling hopelessly since, although Northampton's unfamiliar and inexperienced side eventually fell 26-6, it took Bath a protracted 68 minutes to score the first of two tries in four minutes into whichtheir victory was effectively encapsulated.

The resumption of the Courage Clubs' Championship has done Northampton no good at all because it was their misfortune immediately to play Leicester and Bath, second and first respectively, and they are now more firmly rooted to the bottom of the First Division than ever.

This makes Ian McGeechan, Saints' director of rugby, harder-pressed than ever. "Another 25 per cent ball would have made a lot of difference," he said, musing on what might have been if Bayfield and Rodber had been present.

Bath were without three England men - Catt, Ubogu and Clarke - but the effect on Northampton of the England dictat is disproportionately high, especially when they already have other leading players - Hunter, Dawson and Walton - among the long-term injured.

So McGeechan deserves sympathy. So does Rowell, who as England manager is simply following the old Geoff Cooke dictum that the huge growth in English rugby's popularity at every level is led from the top: the England team. Ergo, the England team, especially in a World Cup year, must be accorded absolute priority.

Would that it were so easy. Rowell is said to have upset the South Africans and other team managers at a World Cup managers' meeting last month, and he can take it that leading clubs are pretty upset too that, having had virtually no meaningful rugby fortwo months, their best players are suddenly off limits now that they are playing again.

"It's a responsibility of the club to take the pressure off the players, to make sure they are not in an awkward situation torn between club and country," John Hall said after leading the champions to another vital two points.

Perverse as it sounds, in Bath's case pre-international calls can be most convenient. Take Saturday: Ben Clarke was being forcibly rested a week before the Dublin match, so was Eric Peters a week before making his Scotland debut against Canada. At last the unsettled Steve Ojomoh could be reintroduced without having to unsettle someone else.

Indeed Bath's real problem has less to do with England than with the intractability of satisfying the aspirations of so many fine players, Ojomoh included.

"Our first aim is to win the games and if that doesn't mean everyone is happy all the time that's hard luck," Hall said. "I maintain that if you force your way into the Bath side you are on the international stage straight away, and if you retain your place and become an integral part of the side you can expect to get international honours."

This is incontrovertible - consider Peters, who is not even a first-teamer - but for Northampton, who are now three points behind West Hartlepool as well as Harlequins, it is survival itself that is in jeopardy when they are forced to turn off their leading lights.

On Saturday it did Harlequins no good either and I just wonder what Rowell would now be saying if he had remained Bath coach instead of becoming England manager. I well recall what he thought when the 1993 Lions coach wanted his players for the pre-New Zealand weekend on which Bath clinched that season's title at Saracens. It was distinctly unsympathetic.

That coach was none other than Ian McGeechan, who relented and allowed Barnes, Reed and Clarke to play. With roles reversed, he would now appreciate Rowell's consideration. McGeechan wants to rest Rodber and Bayfield from Northampton's cup-tie against Richmond on 28 January rather than the league game with Sale on 11 February, a week before England play Wales.

It is impossible to overstate the implications for the likes of Northampton and Harlequins of failing to remain in the First Division, but at the same time the World Cup is not Rowell's fault. Which only goes to show that the Rugby Football Union should have accepted the responsibility by doing what the Welsh have done and cleared the weekend before internationals of First Division fixtures.

Had this happened, there would have been no embarrassment: not for Rowell, not for the clubs and not for the pigs in the middle, the players. Whether they actually need to be resting rather than playing is another - yet another - matter, but of all the clubs in England Bath need worry least.

Against Northampton, Bath fielded eight internationals even without Catt, Ubogu and Clarke, not to mention the rested Graham Dawe, the self-styled Gary Lineker of rugby, and the injured Andy Reed.

They set out to play an expansive game but for too long all it yielded was four penalties by Jonathan Callard, who also missed two from in front of the posts, to two by Paul Grayson, a kicker remembered by Bath as the nemesis who booted them out of the cup for Waterloo two seasons ago.

When Jeremy Guscott failed with the easy part, dummying instead of giving a scoring pass to his outside, after doing the hard part, making a searing break through a crowded midfield, it began to look as if Bath would have to content themselves with the mere fact of victory rather than the manner of its achievement.

But they produced their most convincing rugby in the period that followed, culminating in the two tries. Tony Swift owed his 157th for the club initially to Nick Beal's missed touch and at the end to an exquisite penultimate pass by the conspicuous Martin Haag to Phil de Glanville.

Finally, Simon Geoghegan left Beal standing to add his fifth in as many first-team games, exploiting Marcus Olsen's smartness in thought and deed at a tapped free-kick. Callard's conversions mean that for the first time in four months Bath have a better points difference, as well as two more points, than Leicester.

Bath: Tries Swift, Geoghegan; Conversions Callard 2; Penalties Callard 4. Northampton: Penalties Grayson 2.

Bath: J Callard; A Swift, P de Glanville, J Guscott, S Geoghegan; R Butland, M Olsen; D Hilton, G Adams, J Mallett, M Haag, N Redman, J Hall (capt), S Ojomoh, A Robinson.

Northampton: N Beal; H Thorneycroft (A Gallagher, h-t, 42), F Packman, M Allen, C Moir; P Grayson, B Taylor (capt); M Hynes, A Clarke (M Volland, 59), M Lewis, G Webster, J Phillips, J Cassell (S Foale, 70), G Seely, A Pountney.

Referee: D Leslie (Preston).