1
'World-class' Sam Underhill commits to Bath
By Josh Raisey
England flanker Sam Underhill has signed a two-year contract extension at Bath, ending any speculation surrounding a potential move to the Top 14.
With the 27-year-old's contract expiring at the end of the season, he had reportedly attracted interest from a number of French clubs last year after missing out on England's initial World Cup squad. Since those links surfaced, the flanker's Test career has turned around.
He was called into Steve Borthwick's World Cup squad midway through the tournament, earning the player of the match award in the bronze final against Argentina, before starting every match for England in this year's Guinness Six Nations.
This season has also seen a change in fortunes for Bath as well, who sit in second place in the Gallagher Premiership and face Exeter Chiefs on Saturday at Sandy Park in the round of 16 in the Investec Champions Cup.
With 85 appearances for Bath already to his name since joining from the Ospreys in 2017, Underhill will add to that tally over the next two years.
After signing the new deal, Underhill said: “I'm really pleased to be staying here. Bath feels like home and it's an incredibly special place to play.
“This group has loads of potential and I'm excited to see where we can go.”
Bath head of rugby Johann van Graan was effusive in his praise of the flanker after his new deal.
“Sam is world-class," he said.
"He is one of the best players in Europe and is an exceptional openside flanker. I am very glad he is staying at Bath.”
Trending on RugbyPass
2
Stuart Lancaster 'wants out' of Racing 92 and eyeing Euro giants job
3
Henry Arundell lined up for early England homecoming
4
Government provides bleak assessment on the state of the Premiership
5
Latest Comments
Well that sux.
Go to commentsLike I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
Go to comments