Meaty Montpellier leave Bath reeling and offer Prem French lessons

Nobody really knows what to make of the orgy of tries that is English rugby these days. The dazzling hands, the scarcely believable comebacks, the, er, bewildered defences. Evidence of a new dimension of attacking rugby, uncontainable and breathless? Or not to be trusted?

Bath have found themselves of late at the heart of the debate – and in this 32-14 defeat they were reminded what rugby feels like when served up in more old-fashioned style, hard and brutal.

Montpellier are a formidable team indeed. They were beaten finalists in the Top 14 last season, the same season in which they succeeded Bath as champions of the Challenge Cup, the Champions Cup’s junior event.

It is traditional in the first weekend of this event to jump to wild conclusions about the respective states of the game in Europe’s prime rugby nations. We shall try to refrain from that here, but if English rugby was to jump to any conclusions about the efficacy of their version of jouez, jouez as currently peddled in the Prem, Montpellier, currently in modest mid-table of the French league, shrugged their hefty shoulders and played one of England’s finest off their own park every which way.

You want jouer? They did that with tries one and two of their four, although it was their break-out midway through the second half that best epitomised that famous French flair and set up not another try, but that almost-unheard-of phenomenon in English rugby, the penalty kick at goal, Montpellier’s second of the match.

This was real, old-fashioned rugby, all right. Adam Hastings landed one penalty in the first half, to keep Montpellier within four points at the break. That second penalty, just shy of the hour, extended the visitors’ lead to the same margin. They never relinquished it.

Bath played plenty of rugby, but wave after wave of it dashed against the rocks of those hard shoulders. Bath’s indiscipline was a feature throughout, sometimes hammered at the breakdown – where Alex Bécognée and Lyam Akrab in particular were ruthless – at other times painfully loose as they tried to clear out their opponents in similar fashion.

The three games Bath have played in the Prem this season have yielded 243 points. Last weekend, in the defeat at Northampton, there were 18 tries. Here we had six, which is hardly a dearth of the blessed things, but the tone of the occasion was very different, more crucible than carnival.

It feels fair to note, without jumping too far to any conclusions, that French rugby has proved itself these past few seasons to be where it is at. Of the two lineups, Bath’s bore much closer relation to the side that won the Challenge Cup final last year (part of that season’s treble, lest we forget) than Montpellier’s did to the team that won it this. In other words, this was far from Montpellier’s first-choice lineup.

And there were plenty of subplots beyond the usual Anglo-French argy-bargy. Englishmen in exile, albeit self-imposed, impressed as much as they must have made Steve Borthwick yearn they were still here. Lennox Anyanwu, the former Harlequins centre, made hay opposite his two England opponents in midfield. His break at the end of the first half would have resulted in a brilliant try but for a forward pass by Hastings.

Then his soft hands were involved in the try Montpellier scored at the start of the second. As soon as they were, on came Billy Vunipola, just to remind the English of how many No 8s they have playing in France. At least young Arthur Green, playing at the base of Bath’s scrum, reminded those same English that he might prove yet another option for Borthwick to turn to. His pick, step and sprint through the fringes of a ruck earned Bath that lead at the break, yielding their second – and final – try of the contest.

Bath should have had a third at the start of the second, when Joe Cokanasiga could not gather a straightforward pass to score in the corner. It was symptomatic of a side we know are better than this (lest we jump to any conclusions) but, like the surreal rugby they find themselves at the centre of domestically, do not seem quite sure of whether they are right or wrong at the moment.

Even the maestro Finn Russell had to cede the light to his international understudy. Again, let us not jump to conclusions about this immaculately mature performance by Hastings against the master – it helps to play behind a pack like that – but Scotland will have no qualms about picking him because he plays in France.

Russell suffered the proverbial game of two halves, brilliant in the first, but frustrated in the second, no more so than when his fingertip pass was intercepted by Donovan Taofifenua for the latter’s second try, Montpellier’s third, just past the hour, to throw Bath into real trouble.

They knew then, as if they had not felt it already, that this was not the stuff of the Prem lately. This was meaty rugby. Turns out it still works.