Bath overcame a struggling London Irish side this weekend to earn themselves a bonus point 14-45 away victory and see them rise up the Aviva Premiership table to fifth place.
Rhys Priestland made his debut for Bath and started the action by converting a penalty early on after Kyle Eastmond’s jagged run was halted illegally. The Exiles had the chance to level the game, but Shane Geraghty missed his kick.
The Bath pack asserted their dominance by winning a lineout in the Exiles’ half allowing Leroy Houston the opportunity to power over the line for the game’s first try. Priestland successfully kicked the conversion to give Bath a ten point lead.
Alafoti Faosiliva received a yellow card for a high tackle on Irish centre Tom Fowlie leaving Bath with 14 men. Shortly afterwards the visitors looked to be down to 13 men after Matt Garvey appeared to illegally bring down a maul and the Exiles were awarded a penalty try. However, both the try and yellow card were rescinded after the TMO showed Brendan McKibbin making contact with Henry Thomas’ head. McKibbin was subsequently banned for the rest of the game and Bath maintained their ten point lead.
At the restart, Priestland kicked Bath’s penalty into touch and the resulting lineout offered Ollie Devoto the chance to blast over the line and score the second try of the game. Priestland scored his second conversion of the game and gave Bath a 17 point lead.
The Exiles responded with a try of their own as substitute Scott Steele got himself over the try line. Geraghty slotted the conversion to reduce the deficit.
Half-time: London Irish 7-17 Bath
Bath came racing out of the blocks in the second half as Chris Cook ran down the left flank before setting up Faosiliva to score. Then, Rokoduguni made a similar run to Cook before passing off to Eastmond who scored an easy try. Tom Homer converted both tries to give Bath a 24 point lead.
London Irish weren’t disheartened, however, and resilient attacking resulted in Fergus Mulchrone forcing his way over the line to score the Exiles’ second try of the game.
Bath came right back though with Priestland scoring a try after running an impressive line and skipping past the London Irish defence. Substitute George Ford calmly kicked the conversion and Bath started to pull away.
Good play from winger Rokoduguni led to fellow Fijian Niko Matawalu scoring the last try of the game. Rokoduguni chipped over the Exiles’ defensive line and Aseli Tikoirotuma slipped when attempting to gather the ball. Matawalu pounced on the mistake and charged on to score. Ford then converted with the last kick of the game, rounding off a massively impressive Bath victory.
Full-time: London Irish 14-45 Bath
