Van Graan praises fans after massive crowd for pre-season game

Bath Rugby head coach Johann van Graan praised the club’s supporters for a massive turnout at the pre-season match against visitors Glasgow Warriors on Saturday 6th September.

Bath Rugby head coach Johann van Graan was impressed by his side’s win over Glasgow Warriors – and he gave special praise to the fans | Photo © Richard Briggs

In glorious weather conditions at the Rec, a crowd of 11,783 saw the Blue, Black & White demolish the BKT United Rugby Championship outfit 47-14.

And van Graan said: “How amazing is that? 11,700 people for the first pre-season game. That’s incredible, that’s more than a lot of people get for a normal-season game.

“Brilliant – and the thing that struck me today was the amount of kids.

“The amazing thing about sport is the kids that we’ve got supporting Bath now will be Bath supporters for ever. It’s so great to see.”

Bath scored seven tries against the Warriors – and van Graan was delighted by what he saw.

He said: “Our skill level was pretty good. And we made 11 changes at half-time. I thought we kept playing with speed.

“The two moments of the game for me were just before half-time when the score was 14-7 and we kept them out and then flipped it when the team that started the second half came on, it was immediate speed change and we scored straight away.

“Never too high, never too low, first pre-season game, just over 30 guys got game time, so pretty happy with it.

“There are loads of guys still to come back. Squad – give as many guys exposure as possible.”

Winger Henry Arundell impressed van Graan with two tries after coming off the bench for his debut, having signed for the club from Racing 92.

 “Speed – the reason that we signed him is for his speed,” said van Graan.

“Specifically his first try I thought he scored really well and not a lot of our wingers get tries from mauls [as Arundell did for his second five-pointer]. So I’m very happy with his start.”

Also impressing van Graan were young full-back Sam Winters and debutant scrum-half Bernard van der Linde.

“I thought Sam Winters was class as a young lad just out of school,” said van Graan. “I thought his first run here was decisive, he wanted the ball in his hands.

“Bernard van der Linde wanted the ball in his hands. He made numerous breaks. The reason why we signed him is he takes on defences, so I thought that was really good. I’m sure a lot of Bath supporters that have seen him today will be excited about him coming.

“But generally speaking, good team efforts, good hit outs and scoring 47 to 14, defensively we like to concede as little as possible and attack and score as much as possible. It sounds so obvious, but that’s what we had to do.”

Ethan Staddon was Bath’s star performer, picking up the Pol Roger Performance of the Match award.

“He looked really hungry,” said van Graan. “I thought he carried really well, good in the breakdown, excellent support play, good in defence and just his feeling for the ball, the ball just kept finding him specifically on the edges and I thought he did really well.”

Centre Chris Harris shone on his Bath debut after signing from Gloucester Rugby.

“Everything I expected and more,” said van Graan. “Everybody speaks about his defence, his defence was exceptional today. I thought he was really good in attack.

“He squared up, he had good moments and he was physical. I think of the turnover that we made on our own try line and he went 10 yards sideways and then forwards, so really happy with him as a human being – class.

“He’s been so good within the group. He and Butty [Will Butt] were the two centres that started the pre-season, so it seems like they’ve been playing together forever.

“I’m really happy with him and he’s fitted in really well.”

Bath were set to travel to Ireland yesterday (Sunday 7th September) for a training camp and a pre-season fixture against van Graan’s former club Munster.

“We’ll have some squad time together, we’ll do some fun things, we’ll plan for the season,” said van Graan.

“There’s so many things that we’ve got to go through in terms of PREM, PREM Cup and Champions Cup.

“What does it look like over the season? What does everybody’s individual plan look like? What do we want to do collectively? What are the learnings from last season? What are our goals internally for this season?

“There’s very few teams in world rugby that go through a season unbeaten. We are the treble champions and I believe a lot of teams will put a marker on us, so how do we handle that and make sure we become comfortable with that?”