How English rugby’s most dominant club went title-less for 29 years ...Middle East

Trips to the Rec to watch the Bath team of the 1990s were a treat.

They won the league six times in eight seasons from 1989 to 1996, the rugby was sublime, and their swagger was summed up in a see-it-to-believe-it moment at Saracens in 1993 when England internationals Jeremy Guscott and Ben Clarke bungee-jumped from cranes behind the ground to celebrate the latest title, just before going on a Lions tour.

Proper leagues in England had only begun in 1987, and the fiercely intelligent, acerbic coach Jack Rowell set the standards under the amateur ways.

For the tale of what happened next, an essential watch is the 1997 BBC TV documentary The Rugby Club. It shows the seismic culture shock at Bath after the sport went professional. Everyone was adjusting, but Bath had the most to lose.

“If any sport ever goes professional in the future, that TV documentary can be shown to them on how not to do it,” Jon Sleightholme, the Bath and England wing at the time, tells The i Paper now.

“It was no one’s fault; just that it was all new and we didn’t know what we were doing, really.

“I was a young lad, 23, 24 years old, I’d been earning 13 grand a year as a newly-qualified teacher and all of a sudden we were getting paid to play. Bath sent us out to train all day long. And you’d come to Saturday and think ‘I should be fitter now, because I am professional. Actually, I’m knackered.’”

Jeremy Guscott made over 250 club appearances for Bath (Photo: Getty)

Former Bath owner Andrew Brownsword had a successful business selling greetings cards with cuddly bears on them, but he wasn’t prepared for this.

During the course of filming, head coach Brian Ashton fell out with the board and left, then one of the men he clashed with, John Hall, followed him out. Bath gave rugby league stars Jason Robinson and Henry Paul short-lived deals.

“Other clubs could see the wheels had come off,” Sleightholme says. “I remember going to Gloucester shortly after it screened, and I just got abused by the Shed for the whole game.”

Sleightholme loved playing for Bath but out he went, to Northampton Saints, and in came Ieuan Evans, the Wales and Lions wing. Suddenly the dedication of the hooker Graham Dawe driving 300 miles to and from his farm on the Devon-Cornwall border looked like an old-fashioned concept.

When the Premiership succeeded the Courage Leagues in 1997-98, Andy Robinson was Bath’s coach, briefly assisted by Sir Clive Woodward, and the club won the European Cup final against Brive.

But the successful formula had gone, and most of the serial title winners would too. Only four of the 1998 European-champion team played in the one who beat Leeds in April 2002 to finish one place above the bottom-placed Tykes.

Three weeks later Bath were humiliated, 68-12 at local rivals Gloucester. Ultimately there was no relegation, but Bath had never previously finished lower than sixth.

A salary cap of £1.8m was an added equalisation and Bath were sticking to it. And while observers mused on whether the old title-winning team would have fitted under the cap, Leicester Tigers and Wasps took over as England’s dominant forces.

2003 to 2010

Steve Borthwick was never the type to make a public outburst during his time as captain of Bath but he ran out of patience with the Brownsword regime after losing the European Challenge Cup final to Clermont Auvergne in 2007.

“Bath has sat on its laurels,” Borthwick said at the time. “People come and play for Bath because of the fantastic reputation but that doesn’t exist any more.

“Players are asking why we are not making signings. We see other clubs with fantastic training facilities, where are ours? Where’s the investment in our club?”

Bath did win the Challenge Cup the following year, but it was Borthwick’s last match. The ambitious lock forward, an obvious possible future pillar of the club, joined the upwardly mobile Saracens instead.

These were the nearly years. Bath lost to Wasps in the 2004 Premiership final and were beaten in three semi-finals in a row: 2008, 2009 and 2010.

They were rocked by scandal in 2009, with their England prop Matt Stevens banned for two years for testing positive for cocaine, followed by Australia lock Justin Harrison banned for drugs-related charges and promptly retiring, and three more players suspended by the RFU players for missing drugs tests.

David Flatman was a loosehead prop at Bath for nine years from 2003 and he tells The i Paper the way it degenerated still hurts like hell.

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“I was young when I joined, and I’d gladly take those first few years back over someone offering me another 20 England caps,” Flatman says.

“John Connolly, Michael Foley, Richard Graham and Brian Smith were a great coaching team. We would have laid in the road for Connolly. [Second row] Steve Borthwick was nothing like the rest of us but he loved us and we loved him.

“We lost the 2004 Premiership final under the old format where the top team in the league didn’t play for three weeks, and we were dead. Then the coaches got picked off by other teams.”

It grew even darker around 2008 and 2009.

“Pardon my French but I’d say even now ‘who the f*** let Steve Borthwick go?’” Flatman says.

“He was the most important person in our team, our club, by a long way, and all he effectively said was ‘treat me with respect, please’. The only reason to fall out with him was he would treat the head coach like an equal, and they couldn’t handle the friction.

“We never forgave Steve Meehan – who was head coach and one of the best coaches I’ve ever had – for that. A bit like, years later, Bath let [former England second row] Danny Grewcock go as academy director. In terms of building an environment, it was sporting suicide.”

Flatman remembers players jettisoned for spending too long injured; contractually correct, but hated by the squad.

“We were Challenge Cup winners, and in the European Cup semis [in 2009]; we were well coached, had a good set-piece, exciting players,” Flatman adds.

“We were getting there, it felt magic again. Then in the drugs scandal [in 2009], three of the players never tested positive but they missed tests, and the overall effect was us losing a handful of first-class players we were unable to replace that summer. Andy Higgins was a major character, Alex Crockett was really important to us, Michael Lipman was tough as coffin nails.

“Meanwhile Steve Meehan our head coach was back in Australia and people were saying ‘where is he?’ We all liked Mark Barkwell, the forwards coach, and he was got rid of. The mind games and the psychology and whispering accelerated.”

Not even George Ford could end their long wait for a trophy (Photo: Getty)

In 2010, Bruce Craig, who had made a fortune transporting pharmaceuticals, became Bath’s main backer.

A glimpse of the old glory in 2015 saw Bath with Mike Ford as head coach and his fly-half son George signed from Leicester lose the Premiership final to the new force of Saracens. But the two Fords soon zoomed away: Mike to Toulon in 2016, and George back to Leicester a year later.

Craig gave Bath palatial training facilities at Farleigh House – another case of see it to believe it; critics said it made the players too pampered. He gave them Sir Ian McGeechan, Gary Gold, Mike Ford, Todd Blackadder and Stuart Hooper as directors of rugby.

In the backs, they tried some of the best from Wales, in Jamie Roberts, Rhys Priestland and Gavin Henson, and from England: Ford, Anthony Watson, Jonathan Joseph and others. On at least one occasion, Craig was said to have signed a player without asking the coaches.

Successive finishes in the Premiership of ninth in 2015-16, fifth, sixth, sixth, fourth and seventh led to the nadir of 2021-22: 13th and last place in the Premiership, with Bath spared the drop by a Covid-related moratorium on relegation. In an echo of 2002, they lost 64-0 at Gloucester in April 2022.

Flatman humorously references Craig’s “layered, blow-dried hair” and “Versace shirt unbuttoned down to the middle” but also speaks up for him with passion. “

I worked for Bruce for a while after playing, though I don’t know him well. He wasn’t like us, and people would say he’s too involved. But it’s all his money.

“He’s paying 100 mortgages there. Andrew Brownsword, lovely man, but he didn’t spend what Bruce does. And if I was losing millions of pounds and losing games, I wouldn’t put the kettle on and pretend nothing’s happened.”

2022 to 2025

Craig took his latest gamble in autumn 2021, hiring the Munster head coach Johann van Graan – a South African who had helped the Bulls win Super Rugby and coached the Springboks’ 2015 World Cup semi-final forwards – for the 2022-23 season. Then Craig recruited Edward Griffiths, a prime architect of the Saracens upswing, for a root-and-branch review of Bath.

“I spoke to everyone at the club,” Griffiths tells The i Paper, speaking publicly about the review for the first time. “Then I phoned Bruce, and said I have got some fair ideas, but I haven’t spoken to one person – you.

“And he said, ‘I’m in the Bahamas’, so I looked up flights for 10 minutes, called him back, and said ‘can you pick me up at Nassau airport tomorrow at three o’clock?’ By the end of that, he was suggesting I should become executive chairman of the club, preparing for what was to follow.”

Starting his role in January 2022, Griffiths spoke to Van Graan on an almost daily basis, with trips to Limerick or Bath by each man, to work on staff structures and the squad.

“It’s interesting how a squad can be turned around quickly,” Griffiths says.

“Bath had good players. All you needed to do was put those players in a place where they could be at their best. That meant significantly upgrading the coaching staff, the medical staff, the strength and conditioning staff, hiring a nutritionist, getting a proper manager, organising every aspect of the players’ lives to improve that.

“Rory Murray, the head of medical brought from Bristol, is outstanding; Sarah Jenner the nutritionist from Munster. So much of top rugby is about medical. Having a top player available who might otherwise not have been, is huge. In the past Bath had been happy to pour resources into players but not so happy to put them into people who look after players.

“Look at the players who suffered in that 2021-22 season. A lot of them will be playing in the Premiership final on Saturday – their second consecutive Premiership final.”

Griffiths says he would not have recruited the expensive Scotland fly-half Finn Russell, who arrived in 2023, “if you were looking to build a squad with a strong culture and to develop sustained success. But by all accounts, he has been absolutely exceptional, inspired, and Bruce and Johann should take full credit for that.”

Griffiths still represents six Bath players, and he recalls bumping into one who was struggling in the academy, and on his way to review the full 80 minutes of his most recent performance for a third-division club. The review was with Russell. “Those are the kinds of things that make a difference to clubs,” says Griffiths.

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Craig and Griffiths parted ways after four months but they had “given the system a jolt”.

Bath finished second in the Premiership last season and lost a close final to Northampton. Last month in Cardiff they beat Lyon to land the European Challenge Cup, their first major trophy since 2008.

Insiders say they have worked on adding a killer instinct; to have the leeway in Van Graan’s core “process” to slam the foot to the floor if an attack is on. Van Graan is seen as a rock who can handle his assistant coaches being blunt with him, as long as they have evidence.

Ted Hill and Alfie Barbeary are forwards excellent at giving power in wide channels, to spread the hurt on opponents. Pick-and-goes close to the line pull defenders in, and the prop Thomas du Toit can rumble over, or the likes of Max Ojomoh, Tom de Glanville, Joe Cokanasiga and Will Muir will do the damage in the corners.

They will have incoming England back Henry Arundell next season to add pace. The 8200-capacity Rec of 2002 now holds 14,500 and it still needs rebuilding but it remains a treat to visit.

For now, the Premiership title is the priority, to prevent Bath extending their wait to be champions of England again into 30 years of hurt.

“I still live in central Bath, and there is not a lot going on apart from the rugby, it’s like the southwest of France in that way,” Flatman says.

“The people love Bruce Craig for what he has done. In the street it’s all people want to talk about.

“I went out for dinner last week, half an hour outside Bath, and the Romanian chef there said he’d taken two days off for the Premiership final. They have to win it now.”

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