Champions Cup victory over Bath at the Rec brings back memories of Wales’ 2005 Grand Slam
Scott Williams celebrates scoring Scarlets’ fourth try with Hadleigh Parkes during their European Champions Cup win at Bath.
Photograph: Bob Bradford/CameraSport via Getty Images
Watching the velvet Scarlets reducing Bath to despair was to be transported back 13 years when Wales won the Grand Slam after ripping up the coaching manual and playing with a lot of swash and even more buckle.
Wales’s architect was Stephen Jones, a fly-half who made his name at Llanelli. He was not a twinkle-toed tantaliser like other Stradey Park alumni, such as Barry John, Phil Bennett, Jonathan Davies and Colin Stephens but his thinking was as acute.
He was a facilitator for others and he was in the stand at the Recreation Ground last Friday as the Scarlets’ attack coach, which in his case is not an oxymoron. The region won what was the Pro12 last season by running away from Leinster in the semi-final in Dublin and then doing the same to Munster in the final.
It was Jones who set the momentum for Wales’s grand slam in 2005. They had started with a win over England courtesy of Gavin Henson’s boot and then enjoyed a rampage in Rome. Third up was Bernard Laporte’s France in Paris and the first half was dominated by the home side whose 15-6 interval lead was meagre reward for their dominance.
France began the second period as they had the first, ignoring Laporte’s inculcation to play like England and throwing the ball around like their forebears. When they were turned over in Wales’s 22 and the ball was passed to Jones, they expected him to roll a relieving kick towards the halfway line.
So did his team-mates but Jones ran and kept on running. “I was looking for someone to come up on my shoulder quickly and when that did not happen I kept going,” he said. “Defenders thought I was going to offload and hung off me. I kept going.”
Jones covered 50 metres before support arrived in the form of the Williamses, Shane and Martyn. The latter scored in the left-hand corner and Wales never looked back, in the match or the tournament. The Scarlets’ first try in Bath was a reminder of that afternoon: Rhys Patchell, another fly-half although playing at full-back because of an injury to Leigh Halfpenny, received the ball on his 22 and set off.
He may not have covered the same ground as Jones but after dodging two tacklers, he was tripped. As he fell to ground, he offloaded to the second-row David Bulbring who did not seek contact, as Bath were conditioned for, and the Scarlets were away, eventually scoring through their other lock, Tadhg Beirne.
The Scarlets sucked Bath into a game they were not used to and won with even more comfort than the 35-17 scoreline suggested. Defeat would have put them out of the Champions Cup but if they beat Toulon in Llanelli on Saturday evening, they will become only the second team, after Bath in 2014-15, to top their group after losing in the opening two rounds.
Toulon, for all their dabbling in the export market, will offer a contrast in style, direct where the Scarlets are diverse.
The two sides have been grouped together for the second successive season, the three games so far going to the home side. The Scarlets edged Toulon by a point 13 months ago when Leigh Halfpenny, then with the Top 14 club, missing a late penalty. They had not then discovered the swagger that would earn them the league title, and while they competed with overtly physical opponents then, this time they will look to do it with their high tempo, offloading game.
The Scarlets do not offload for the sake of it, as they showed in Toulon in October when they recovered from a slow start to lead in the final quarter before having to settle for a losing bonus point. A few years ago, a then assistant coach at a Premiership club said his players were discouraged from passing in contact because of the risk it involved: keep possession was the mantra. Play it safe.
The Scarlets get their reward in risk but the attraction of any sport is the variety it offers. Twenty-four hours after Bath found themselves out of their depth in the red sea, Ospreys and Saracens battled to a draw in a tryless encounter in Swansea. The weather conditions were different but so were the mindsets. Neither team could afford to lose and neither did.
In its very different way, it was as compelling as the encounter at the Recreation Ground, two teams with 13 Lions between them scrapping for every centimetre. And that is what the Scarlets, who dismantled Bath up front and messed up their lineout, will have to do if they are not only to overcome Toulon but progress beyond the quarter-finals.
Their beef, though, will come with a generous portion of horseradish and watching on will be the Wales selectors who have been talking about the Scarlets’ style without being able to get the top off the bottle. Jones may not be among the three names on the Welsh Rugby Union’s shortlist to replace Warren Gatland but he will surely have a role to play after the 2019 World Cup.
The running man keeps going.
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