Rugby Union: Robinson puts faith in young disciples

Coach feels Bath's new generation can live up to a grand tradition of excellence.

THE VICARAGE Road faithful are connoisseurs of the bizarre. Since their beloved Saracens upped sticks and moved to Watford two seasons ago, they have seen the ground-breaking introduction of the remote-controlled kicking tee transporter and witnessed the great Michael Lynagh lining up his penalty shots to the multi-decibel strains of The Muppet Show theme tune. They have experienced "Wendy's Five-Minute Madness", whereby the local chip shop owner dishes out free grub if Sarries score a try in the allotted time. A handful even claim to have been present when Kyran Bracken played a full 80 minutes of rugby without breaking something, although no one really believes them.

But one sight left the black-shirted congregation comprehensively and entirely gob- smacked. Late in the evening of 20 May this year, in the boozer opposite the stadium, Mr Andrew Robinson of Bath Rugby Club was spotted sporting a bright red fez, an exclusive fashion item worn only by the most fanatical Sarries followers. Given that Robinson had never previously been heard to acknowledge the existence of a second rugby club, his celebration of someone else's victory was quite a departure. But then, Saracens had just done Bath the great favour of winning them a place in this season's Heineken Cup by beating Newcastle in the final fixture of the Allied Dunbar Premiership campaign. Robinson would happily have spent the day as Francois Pienaar's butler, had that been the price of European qualification.

He would do anything for Bath, would Robbo. From the moment he appeared at Lambridge, the club's ramshackle mud heap of a training ground, in 1986 to do battle with the psychotically motivated Roger Spurrell for the open-side flanker's berth - and it was a vicious battle, all blood and snot and venom - he became the conscience of his team, the single most potent symbol of the collective ethic. He brought the same passion to the South-west, England and Lions teams, but it was Bath that stirred him most deeply.

In crossing the Rubicon that divides playing from coaching, he has not changed one iota. "I am concerned only with ensuring that this club wins, and continues to win," he said this week. "In professional sport, you have to win to survive."

Which takes us back once again to the events of last spring. When, in the first weekend of May, Harlequins outscored the West Countrymen by three tries to one to secure their first ever competitive victory at the Recreation Ground, the odds against Bath participating in the European elite were the same as those against the coach avoiding a visit from his own P45. That is to say, very long indeed.

Did he fear for his future? "No, absolutely not," he insisted, after naming his side for this afternoon's Heineken Cup opener with Toulouse. "Why be fearful? We all move on, one way or another. What coach spends his entire career at one club? What hurt me was the fact that we'd lost.

"I don't take defeat very well, never have. I'm embarrassed by it. I go into myself - I sulk, if you like - and I'm not very nice to know. I accept that the game is over, but that's all I accept. I certainly don't accept losing and when it happens I spend 48 hours asking myself where I went wrong. But that's a private ritual. You have to be positive when you're dealing with the players, so after the Quins defeat I went into the dressing room and congratulated them on the effort they'd put in. I said: `Look, we won't be in Europe, so let's learn from this one and enjoy our final game against London Scottish'. As it turned out, we ran in 70-odd points and gave ourselves a chance of qualifying. Sarries then did their bit, so here we are."

By "here", he meant the big time, and club matches do not come much bigger than Bath-Toulouse on the banks of the River Avon. The game may be the first of six pool fixtures rather than a knock-out tie, but it has been the talk of the town for weeks. Why? Because it is Europe, and Europe means the world in these parts. It is the oval-ball version of Manchester United versus Juventus. Robinson is too proud a man ever to have shed tears in defeat, but he shed them in victory when Bath beat Brive to win the Heineken Cup in Bordeaux almost two years ago. "The memory of that day still sends shivers down my spine," he admitted.

The intervening 22 months have not been easy, largely because Robinson has been overseeing a root and branch restructuring of his side. Eighty per cent of today's starting line-up are Heineken Cup virgins and some of them - the right wing Iain Balshaw, the centres Mike Tindall and Shaun Berne, the scrum-half Gareth Cooper, the tight-head prop Chris Horsman and the second row Steve Borthwick - have barely started shaving. They are beginning to come good, though; Robinson believes the next great Bath side is slowly emerging from its cocoon.

"Bath has always been a players' club, first and foremost, and it takes time to find players who fit the shirt," he said. "I'm talking about players who want to play here rather than anywhere else, players who are prepared to take ownership of their own performance, who want to work hard, who have the confidence to say: `I know I'm good and I'm going to play like I'm good'. I'm talking about people who recognise that no one person is bigger than the team and, as a result, will gear their whole lifestyle to being a part of that team.

"When we see someone we're interested in, we spend a couple of days weighing them up and explaining what we expect from them. People were surprised when we signed Warwick Waugh (the 6ft 8in former Wallaby second row), presumably because they saw him as a 31-year-old who had played his best rugby and was going downhill in Australian terms. But we saw him as a Bath player, someone who could contribute here. We didn't put him straight in the first team, of course - you don't just walk into a Bath side, no matter how big a bloke you are - but he's in on merit now and bringing something of his own to the mix.

"We haven't even started to realise our potential yet, but I'm very excited about the talent we have here. Yes, we played ourselves into a rut last year and our inexperience showed when we tried to play our way back out of it. But I can feel the passion returning to the dressing room, and it was passion that underpinned all the outstanding Bath teams. The players have always had the right skill levels, but now they're playing with desire and expectation, too. They've discovered a taste for winning."

At which point, Robinson headed for the players' canteen to give his charges the latest news. "I've decided to cancel Christmas," he announced. "We've got Leicester, Gloucester and Saracens in the space of a week over the holiday period, so basically there's no holiday." Good old Robbo, ever the comedian. The next thing we know, he'll be wearing a fez.