Bath v Cardiff Harlequins

Competition: Cotswold D1

Date: 20 October 2018

Venue: Odd Down, Bath

Final Score Bath 19:3 Cardiff

Bath cruise to victory

Bath came into this game off the back of a good away win at Oxford University, and on paper this game was going to be tougher. Before the league restructure, Cardiff had done enough to secure premiership status, and despite losing a few first team players in the summer should of had enough fire power to do some damage. This wasn’t the case.

Bath are looking a balanced side, the midfield is mobile, the defence solid and the attack more than capable of scoring given the opportunity. There is still some fine tuning to do, the University have a different style of play to the City, which, when integrated will make the team even more competitive.

The goals for Bath came at regular intervals, all through physical dominance on the ground balls and good clean passing in transition. All the midfield are capable at scoring from outside the zone, which forced the visiting defence to come out further than they would have liked; and when they did, Seb Morgan and Craig Morey cause problems from the inside. If Bath lack anything its patience, the team is very eager to go to goal, and for the most part this works well, but shouldn’t be the default mode of play. When the ball did move behind goal, both Lloyd Butler and Simon Griffiths were able to work the drives on the posts.

At face, Chris Mills and Alex Foster-Powel came up with the majority of the ball, helped by whoever was on the wing at the time, all the wing play was excellent, and possession gained meant goal chances.

In Goal Mark Lane, when called upon looked unbeatable, helped in no small part by the trio of Luke Wilmot, Josh Yeoman and Marcus Dunn, it was a rare occasion that the Cardiff attack managed to cause problems, even when down to a three-man zone at one stage. Teams don’t get away with sloppy mistakes when there are three referees on the field.

MVP for the game goes to Ben Whitfield, very strong in all departments with very good decision making, mixing the play well and bringing the rest of the attacking unit into play.

Whitfield was up against some strong candidates, particularly Butler and Mills, both bagging 5 goals each, Mills now leads the goal scoring charts.

That’s two from two in the first round of Cotswold games, Bath now move on to the Intermediate Flags and SEMLA League D3, new opposition, on this form the future looks bright.

Quarter Scores

1^st quarter Bath 4:1 Cardiff

Foster-Powel (2), George, Morgan

2^nd quarter Bath 4:0 Cardiff

Butler (2) Mills, Morgan

3^rd quarter Bath 5:0 Cardiff

Whitfield, Mills, Morgan, Butler, Mills

4^th quarter Bath 6:2 Cardiff

Butler, Mills (2), Morgan, Butler, George

Final score Bath 19:3 Cardiff

Scorers

Alex Foster-Powel 2

Alex Georg 2

Seb Morgan 4

Lloyd Butler 5

Chris Mills 5

Ben Whitfield 1

Officials

Miles Whittle (Bath/Panel).

Tom Hamey (Panel)

Emily Storey (Bath Uni/Panel)

Top Scorers

	First Name	Surname	League Goals	League Assists	Flags and Cup Goals	Flags and Cup Assists	Total goals	Total Assists
1	Luke	Wilmot	37	20	1	1	38	21
2	Mike	Carey	21	27	0	2	21	29
3	Simon	Griffiths	20	8	0	2	20	10
4	Alex	George	10	11	0	1	10	12
5	Gareth	Davies	10	1	0	0	10	1
6	Toké	Akinseye	6	15	0	0	6	15
7	Nik	Roberts	6	4	2	0	8	4
8	James	Goldsmith	6	0	0	0	6	0
9	Alex	Taylor	5	5	0	0	5	5
10	Finn	Webster	4	8	0	0	4	8
11	Jack	O'Mahoney	4	4	0	0	4	4
12	Alex	Bird	4	2	0	0	4	2
13	Ollie	Viant	2	2	0	0	2	2
14	Neil	Anthony	2	1	0	0	2	1
15	Nick	Hind	1	1	0	1	1	2
16	Sam	Kettle	0	3	0	0	0	3
17	Tim	Stainthorpe	0	3	0	0	0	3
18	James	Runge	0	3	0	0	0	3
19	Laurence	Dawson-Smith	0	1	0	0	0	1
20	Lloyd	Butler	0	0	3	0	3	0
21	Akito	Jacques	0	0	1	0	1	0