The Aviva Premiership Preseason Has Started So Why Do Bath Still Not Have A Head Coach?

It’s been a strange couple of years for Bath, one of the most decorated clubs in English rugby. This summer isn’t any different, writes Lee Calvert.

For a neutral, Bath are a difficult club to hate. They’re something of an anti-Saracens. They have a history of playing good rugby and their Recreation Ground is a glorious throwback to the amateur days when everything smelt of liniment and you could punch anyone on the field – bar maybe the ref – with impunity. Bath itself, with its architecture, plentiful pubs and permanent miasma of rugby, is one of the best cities in the world to watch the game. If you haven’t been, go.

The 2014-15 season saw Bath reach the Aviva Premiership Grand Final playing a brand a rugby we could all get behind, with George Ford, Kyle Eastmond, Jonathan Joseph, young Ollie Devoto and Anthony Watson using coach Mike Ford’s inventive attacking patterns behind a decent pack. Even Matt Banahan, a man who looks like an Ikea wardrobe only with less pace, looked good. They lost to Saracens (boooo!) eventually, but the last twelve months have demonstrated that in the end everyone loses to Saracens, so there was no shame in that.  Despite the absence of Sam Burgess, whose value or otherwise is a whole other (very long) column, Bath started the 2015-16 season with optimism. The coaching staff of Ford and his very able deputies Toby Booth and Neal Hatley were in place along with the core of players who did so well the year before. “Time to build on the success” was the refrain from the fans and media.

They did this by finishing ninth after spending some of the season flirting with relegation, fielding a pack that at times barely warranted the name. There was George Ford playing with all the certainty of a nerd looking for a prom date, outside of the infuriatingly mercurial Nikola Matawalu. Japan No.8 Amanaki Mafi left the club amid reports of a bust-up over the club physio appointments list (I’m not joking) and the Samoan international flanker Alafoti Fa’osiliva was released after receiving a suspended prison sentence for assaulting a university student.

Mike Ford left his post in May reeling from the bruises inflicted on a gameplan that had looked so very good a year ago, and with talk of disquiet in the dressing room over the Burgess fiasco and just about everything else that had happened in the last 12 months.

Despite the borderline disgrace of a season, recruitment has continued with Toby Faletua, Luke Charteris, Elliott Stooke and others coming in, while Kyle Eastmond and Ollie Devoto going out. But still the head coach position remains vacant with pre-season already underway.

The Bath suits are reportedly in New Zealand to make kissy faces in the direction of Todd Blackadder and Tabai Matson, hoping to bring their good-fit-with-Bath Kiwi style across the world. If they say no then there is talk of Gregor Townsend, whose Glasgow team also play lovely rugby, being next off the rank.

Bath fans will rightly be asking why this is taking so long. The writing was on the wall for Mike Ford last Christmas but he stayed to the very end. Neal Hatley was allowed to go to England and yet, here the famous club is, weeks away from the start of the season with no head coach and nothing concrete in the pipeline.

Maybe they should just get Sam Burgess back?