Jeremy Guscott: Gary Gold can help make Bath great again

We hear so often about teams that  ‘have potential’, but that don’t perform or develop. That is where Bath appear to have been stuck for the best part of a decade, and now Bruce Craig, their owner, is attempting to do something about it by bringing in a brand-new coaching team this summer, including the former Springbok assistant coach, Gary Gold, the former London Irish head coach Toby Booth, and his forwards coach, Neil Hatley.
The arrival of Gold should be a positive, because the South African forwards went well under him in the Peter de Villiers regime. He certainly has some pedigree, and Newcastle performed well in his brief spell with them during their attempt to escape relegation at the end of last season. There is no real blot on his CV, and it looks like a good fit because if there is one area where Bath have looked average for too long it is in the pack, where,in my era, they used to be so strong.
Gold has said that all the players start with a clean slate, and have to prove themselves, and it will be interesting to see how he works it out with his two head coaches, Booth and Brad Davis, who is the only survivor from the old regimes under Ian McGeechan and Steve Meehan.
Booth and Davis are meant to have new and interesting roles, but I hope they don’t overlap too often. Each coaching role should be clear, and they should be accountable – so it might be worth Bath stating exactly who is responsible for what before the start of the season.
In the end, much depends on the quality of the squad they have to work with – and I am not moving from my view that they are a mid-table outfit. As a Bathonian I obviously hope that I am wrong, but for that to happen Bath will have to develop the same sort of exceptional work ethic and belief that Exeter have.
Gold’s goal is to make Bath into something better than mid-table by squeezing everything out of them. He has a true cornerstone in Francois Louw because the Springbok is an exceptional player, one of the ten best in the Premiership. The back rower is the key, a true pro who will be the benchmark for the team, with the added advantage that he and Gold speak the same language tactically and culturally from being in the South African camp together previously.
There is plenty of improvement needed throughout the Bath team. To start with, the half-backs have to be consistent, and Michael Claassens at scrum-half has not been. When he is good, he is very good, but he needs to produce that week in, week out rather than occasionally. Stephen Donald was not fit for purpose when he arrived last season because the All Black reserve fly-half was overweight and undercooked despite his World Cup-winning kick. That also has to change.
Dave Attwood is another big signing from last season who has to step it up. The big lock has put on too much bulk, and needs to lose half a stone and start playing like he was two years ago. The good news in the second row is that the Ulster import, Ryan Caldwell, gets around and puts his body on the line, and the fans at the Rec love that.
However, the real shortfall in the pack for many seasons has been the front row. It has been too passive, lacking the aggression and hard-core physicality to be the sort of front row that other teams dread playing against. However, at least there are signs of improvement with the arrival of Samoan tight-head Anthony Perenise, whose mobility and power has already made him a fans’ favourite, and it might get better still with the Wales prop Paul James, who can play either side, joining this summer.
Bath talk-up their English tight-head, David Wilson, and flanker Carl Fearns has returned from the South Africa tour with his reputation enhanced, so there are the makings of a good pack. Now they have to be turned into a formidable functioning unit – and between them Gold, Booth and Hatley should be able to do that.
The task of sorting out the Bath backline is a bigger problem, because no one seems to know who is where, and who is what. As a consequence there has been a lot of unsuccessful shuffling of the backline to get the right combinations. If Davis gets Claassens and Donald sorted properly at half-back my hunch is that Gold will want Matt Banahan at inside-centre ahead of a playmaker like Olly Barkley, because he will want somebody who can get over the gain-line.
If he goes for Banahan then the obvious thing to do is to train him to play like Jamie Roberts. With Roberts you know he’s going to aim that 6ft 4ins, 17st frame straight at you, and that he’s not going to swerve, but you’ve still got the problem of how to stop him. Banahan is even bigger than Roberts, so the main thing is getting him fit enough to do it. At outside-centre it will be between young Ben Williams and Dan Hipkiss, and the former Leicester man will have to find his form of a couple of seasons ago unless he wants to spend more time on the bench.
Tom Biggs should be on one of the wings, and he has become another crowd favourite because of his huge commitment and effort – but every Bath player should be like that. Young Olly Woodburn should get a few chances on the other wing, and there’s also Kyle Eastmond, the Rugby League import who has been touted as a new Jason Robinson. It would be good to get a fit Eastmond on the pitch on a regular basis. At full-back Nick Abendanon plays exceptionally well on the harder pitches at the start and end of the season, but on the heavier surfaces in mid-season he can sometimes be a bit disappointing. It’s all about being able to adapt, like his Harlequins rival, Mike Brown, has managed to. It’s about being good at the right time – and that means recognising that you can’t run the ball every time you get it.
If you put that Bath backline up against the Harlequins line-up of Care, Evans, Williams, Turner-Hall, Lowe, Monye and Brown, I know which is the better backline. Quins have the cut-and-thrust that Bath lack.
Which brings us to the last of the new Bath coaching team, Mike Ford, the former England defence coach. Ford has a good record, but I think defence coach is the easiest job in the world. It’s basically about doing defensive drills little and often. Practice makes perfect, but when it comes to rehearsing blitz or slide defence, how simple is that?
Whoever Bath’s attack coach is, one of Gold’s most important jobs will be to make sure that he gives him at least double the amount of time that the team spends on defence.