Practice makes perfect for cool Ford

Editor

Bath fly-half George Ford described what went through his head ahead of what proved to be a match-winning penalty against Leinster.

With the game in the balance at 16-16 Ford stepped up to land an attempt from over 40 metres out on the angle to clinch the result.

"You understand what type of kick it is to take a lead with a few minutes to go," Ford said.

"But you just focus on the process. You are in your own little bubble as a goal-kicker, you try and block everything out and just hit the ball like you do hundreds of time in training.

"We didn't score many tries today, but we were positive in the way we went about things."

Head coach Mike Ford felt that his side were showed inexperience in the second half when up by seven points, when they could have settled the result without any late drama. 

Bath's scrum however was excellent, as Ford went out of his way to praise his young props. 

"We showed our inexperience at 16-9 up," Ford senior added.

"We were in control of the game, but we stupidly did things that let them back in. We then got to 19-16 and we did it again, but luckily Stuart (Hooper) nicked that last lineout for us.

"I am pleased we won against a Leinster side full of internationals. Our scrum was awesome – Henry Thomas and Nick Auterac were outstanding – but we can't afford to give teams easy outs and chances to score points like we did today.

"We got lucky today in terms of the end of the game when Stuart won that lineout.

"They (Leinster) are always dangerous when they have got Johnny Sexton kicking his goals.

"I said at half-time we needed to be more patient. We lost the ball too many times when we had good attacking positions through not being patient. If we had played Toulon today, we probably lose."