Stuart Hooper hails ‘outstanding’ Bath front-row
Bath director of rugby Stuart Hooper lauded his front-row after they helped inspire his side to a 22-13 victory over high-flying Northampton in their Premiership clash on Saturday.
Beno Obano, Tom Dunn and Will Stuart had their opposite numbers in trouble throughout and they earned the applause of 14,000 inside the Rec upon being substituted after a 71-minute shift.
It was a scrum continually reset with free-kicks and penalties that yielded the clinching try for number eight Zach Mercer, while Stuart also scored one of the three Bath tries.
Hooper said: “I thought the front-row were outstanding. It’s a long time since I saw a front-row get a standing ovation like that.
“Today was the product of what they’ve done in the week. There’s a huge amount of diligence and accuracy in what they do. You need that in the Premiership.
“Today was always going to be about our boys delivering up front – and they did that.”
Hooper emphasised that scrum and line-out had been something the coaching team had put a huge amount of emphasis on since taking over.
He added: “We understand our game needs to develop and grow and that we need to make use of our attacking players in the backs but, on afternoons like this, you need the ability to keep it tight and win the game in the forwards.
“Northampton obviously came here top of the tree having scored 13 tries and we knew we had to suffocate them and squeeze them. Credit to the players. Their application to the detail was unbelievable.”
Your @Pol_Roger Performance of the Match goes to @WillStuart10 👏
A great performance at the Rec this afternoon, congratulations Will 🔵⚫⚪ pic.twitter.com/42y19kuqas
— Bath Rugby (@BathRugby) November 9, 2019
Hooper is now looking forward to the Champions Cup opener at home to Ulster next week, almost certainly with some of his World Cup contingent returning.
He said: “I’m sure we’ll see some of them in action. They’re excited to get back in Bath and to have an opportunity to get into the team. Some of them have not played as much as the others so they’ll be itching to get back out there.”
Northampton director of rugby Chris Boyd said: “I thought we had enough opportunities in the first half to put a few more points on the board but sloppy execution, poor decisions and some good defence from Bath didn’t allow that to happen.
“We didn’t get off to a good start in the second half. And once Ben Franks got yellow-carded – I’m not sure why – we had to bring a kid on for his first game and 12 minutes later it was seven points under the posts.
“We weren’t good enough to win here. The ground wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I think the biggest factor was that Bath got on top of us in the scrum and that meant we didn’t control the game any more.”