Bath 61 Gloucester 26
Alfie Barbeary’s double helped to seal an emphatic victory in a battle between two West Country bomb squads as Bath booked their trip north for an Challenge Cup semi-final against Edinburgh and kept alive their hopes of a treble.
Barbeary scored once in either half as the hosts careered to a convincing result. The first was an opportunistic effort, the second a bulldozing run that inspired familiar curiosity about his potential to be a weapon at international level.
A place on the tour to Argentina this summer will probably depend on how many of England back-rowers are picked by the British and Irish Lions and Steve Borthwick has tended to favour mobility over power, too. But Barbeary, now 24 and still uncapped, offers a rare capacity to shrug off defenders. Bath did plenty of that here, totting up nine tries in all to leave Gloucester to concentrate on the league.
Both rivals are reasonably recent champions of the Challenge Cup, Gloucester having landed it as recently as 2015 and Bath doing so seven years prior to that. Judging by the selection of two strong squads, they each fancied etching their name on the silverware once more.
George Skivington’s side had a sighter of this game on March 23, when the teams came together in the Premiership. As has become customary for them under Johann van Graan, Bath emptied an imposing six-two bench that day. Interestingly, Gloucester went with six replacement forwards – including several front-liners such as Lewis Ludlam and Jack Clement – as a response here.
As it happened, Bath would get their retaliation in first. Ciaran Donoghue, among their finds of the season, made a ghosting break from an early scrum and fed Will Muir. When the hosts moved the ball back to the right, Tom de Glanville pirouetted on a flat pass from Finn Russell and stretched over.
Donoghue, switched from fly-half to full-back for this match, could not gather the restart and Gloucester hit back almost immediately. Gareth Anscombe’s kick-pass found Santiago Carreras, who converted his own finish superbly.
The tit-for-tat rally continued with Tom Dunn’s pushover, Gloucester having conceded a penalty on the back of Ted Hill’s surge. Russell pushed the conversion this time, inciting cries of “eeyore” from supporters to have travelled up the M5 from Gloucester. Any relish did not last long. Ross Molony pierced midfield from Russell’s short pass and the mulleted, moustachioed Archie Griffin trundled under the posts.
Defence did occasionally assert itself as the scoreboard rattled, Donoghue cutting down Christian Wade with a courageous tackle to force a turnover. Carreras was sparkling, though. Delivering another exhibition of what Bath will have next season when he trades red for blue, the Puma darted at the line and sent Jack Singleton up the middle.
Just as Gloucester were poised to bag a third try, with Hill sin-binned after being tangled in a breakdown close to his own line, Bath stretched their own advantage. Muir regathered a kick superbly and four forwards – Dunn, Beno Obano, Barbeary and Ethan Staddon – and Donoghue linked wonderfully to put Ben ...
