Bath dominate derby

Editor

Bath finished their season with a convincing 50-30 win over West Country rivals Gloucester before a semi-final against Leicester.

They scored six tries in total against a weakened Cherry & Whites side, although the match had little influence on the table, with Bath having already wrapped up second place in the table.

Gloucester put up a good fight in the first half with two tries courtesy of Lewis Ludlow and Steve McColl and a penalty for Aled Thomas. 

Expectedly, however, Bath took the lead with three tries for Kyle Eastmond, George Ford and Sam Burgess to give them a 21-13 lead at half-time.

The visitors scored another penalty for Thomas and there were two tries, another for McColl and the other for Dan Robson in the second half but in the end, they were blown away.

Bath ran in another four tries courtesy of Ollie Devoto, Anthony Watson, Semesa Rokoduguni and Horacio Agulla and there was another penalty for Ford to give them the 50-30 victory.

It was the visitors who opened the scoring with a well worked try after only three minutes down the right wing for which Ludlow claimed the glory.

Their early lead, however, did not last when Matt Banahan found the gap, made a break and found Eastmond, who side-stepped through the Gloucester defence to score.

Eastmond caused the visitors some further problems when he made another fantastic run and offloaded to Ford who dived over in the corner.

Gloucester came back with a penalty for Thomas before Burgess crashed over the line for Bath to secure a bigger lead.

A minute from half-time, a series of fast passes out wide found McColl who crossed the line to score the try and bring the score to 21-13 after the first 40.

Thomas scored the first points of the second half for Gloucester with a penalty but Ford quickly responded with one of his own for the home side.

Gloucester had captain Nick Wood sent to the sin-bin on 53 minutes and Bath took advantage with the try for Devoto. However, the visitors also found the try line within those ten minutes when a Bath pass was intercepted and McColl ran it in for the try.

After a superb team effort a pass out wide found Watson who dived over for Bath and Rokoduguni also found the line as Bath started to run away with it.

Robson scored a consolation try for Gloucester on 77 minutes but it was quickly eclipsed by Agulla, who easily cut through the visitors defence to score the try on 79 minutes to complete the rout.

The scorers:

For Bath:
Tries:
Eastmond, Ford, Burgess, Devoto, Watson, Rokoduguni, Agulla
Cons: Ford 4, Homer 2
Pen: Ford

For Gloucester:
Tries: Ludlow, McColl 2, Robson
Cons: A. Thomas 2
Pens: A. Thomas 2
Yellow Card: Wood

The teams:

Bath: 15 Anthony Watson, 14 Semesa Rokoduguni, 13 Ollie Devoto, 12 Kyle Eastmond, 11 Matt Banahan, 10 George Ford, 9 Peter Stringer, 8 Leroy Houston, 7 Francois Louw (c), 6 Sam Burgess, 5 Dominic Day, 4 Dave Attwood, 3 David Wilson, 2 Rob Webber, 1 Paul James.
Replacements: 16 Ross Batty, 17 Nick Auterac, 18 Henry Thomas, 19 Matt Garvey, 20 Carl Fearns, 21 Chris Cook, 22 Horacio Agulla, 23 Tom Homer.

Gloucester: 15 Rob Cook, 14 Steph Reynolds, 13 Henry Purdy, 12 Brendan Macken, 11 Steve McColl, 10 Aled Thomas, 9 Callum Braley, 8 Lewis Ludlow, 7 Dan Thomas, 6 Elliott Stooke, 5 James Hudson, 4 Tom Hicks, 3 Shaun Knight, 2 Aleki Lutui, 1 Nick Wood (capt).
Replacements: 16, Darren Dawidiuk, 17 James Gibbons, 18 Yann Thomas, 19 Sam Underhill, 20 Jacob Rowan, 21 Dan Robson, 22 Lloyd Evans, 23 Mark Atkinson.

Venue: Recreation Ground
Referee: Dean Richards
Assistant referees: Kelvin Stewart, Simon McConnell
TMO: Stuart Terheege