It's time for what they're calling The Battle of the Overspending Mediocrities Who Came Second A Few Years Ago!
I have to say I can't remember the last time I gave this little of a **** about Bath games. Last few weeks I haven't really watched at all, I've barely known who they're playing week to week. I'm really trying to build myself up to give a **** about the Wasps game today but I just can't seem to. Hypothetically, I'd rather be in Europe next year but ... I don't really care.
I don't know if this is just me or a widespread feeling among Bath fans ... if the latter, the club 100% shoulders the blame.
It has been a particularly dispiriting year TBH.
It's been long enough after Mike Ford, and Todd does seem to have done a good job of healing those wounds. We finally get a season where we're not ravaged by injuries, and... There's no improvement. I still don't know what gameplay Todd wants us to play, and were still underperforming compared tomour training paper, but this time we've had the chance for some consistency of selection, and the ability to train with enough bodies in all positions.
This year, there's no excuse.
Consequently, whilst I was happy enough to see Todd extend at the beginning of the year, I'm now actually quite glad that Todd is off. I just wish I had faith that we'd appoint an experienced, no-nonsense head coach.
Hooper as a backroom DOR is fine, management and a buffer between Bruce and the coaches. But we need an Edwards-type head coach. It looks like we'll get Dempsey with new guys coming in below him, possibly requiring Hooper to be more hands-on, which... is significantly more likely to fail than to succeed.
As for the gradual reduction in interest, the whole sport has been heading that way for me for a few years now. I'm over-saturated with matches, with too much let go, especially time wasting, and the odds stacked too far in the favour of the team in possession at every contest for the ball. I don't feel that retention should be even close to 90% in any aspect of play. Scrums are still a penalty/rescrum lottery. Lines-out are virtually guaranteed retention. Mauls are improving, but no reward for doing it well if one player happens to end up near the ball carrier. Rucks are contests for blasting dangerously and falling over, ending with a crocodile tail.
Intercepts are probably the most common way of changing possession except for offences. Virtually no-one tried to steal the ball, just to earn a penalty by getting a hand on it that can't do anything, typically in a body position that's physically impossible to actually be called "on your feet", it's more "resting on the body underneath you, whilst keeping your feet on the ground". Add in inconsistent reff.ing (it's always been like this, we just never saw it as it was rarely on telly and rarely replayed when it was) and ever changing laws/interpretations the constant spectre of salary cap cheating and threats to ring-fence...
Of course, there's also the phone/tablet induced lowered attention span, meaning that unless a match is rivetting, I'm probably watching about 1/3 of the actual footage (actual amount depends on how interesting the match actually is to me)
Quite honestly, I suspect that if I wasn't discussing rugby in online communities like this, then I'd probably have quit the sport by now.