Dan Robson has told Planet Rugby that last season’s Gloucester “potentially” wouldn’t have drawn with Bordeaux-Bègles, that the “overriding feeling” in the huddle at 36-36 was disappointment, and that his opposite number’s 803 kicking metres were “ridiculous”.
I’d written in my five takeaways that Robson was the best bald Test nine on the pitch. I put it to him in the mixed zone, and he had the answer ready. “It wasn’t hard,” he said. “Maxime was playing tennis.” He meant ten, and he was right on both counts: Lucu spent the night at fly-half and Robson spent it running the Gloucester attack at a tempo the champions plainly didn’t enjoy.
He knew what was coming. Robson had a season in the Top 14 with Pau before coming back to England, and UBB held no mysteries for him. “It was quite nice for me; it felt a bit more familiar than it probably did for a few of the other boys. You try and get them in the right mindset to understand what’s coming, but when a team like Bordeaux comes to town you know exactly what they’re about: full of threats, big physical side, backs that can tear you apart. We were well aware of the threats, and we stood up tonight.”
The numbers say Gloucester did more than stand up. They made 14 entries into the UBB 22 on the night for their five tries; UBB made seven for theirs. I asked whether that was the pure efficiency of the Bordeaux back line or something Gloucester had given away.
“A lot of it we’ll look back on as our mistakes letting them in,” he said. “A bit of discipline, letting them kick into the 22, and with the pack they’ve got and these new maul laws it’s very difficult to stop. A few kick decisions and a few discipline errors probably gave them too many free entries that they didn’t have to work for. We probably had to work a bit harder, but that’s how we play as well. We want to keep hold of the ball and go at teams, and we’re pretty happy with tonight.”
The maul was the night’s great trade. UBB’s drive, with 148kg of Ben Tameifuna at lock, absorbed three Gloucester lineout mauls in the first half without competing in the air, whilst Gloucester’s scrum took the UBB front-row apart on the tighthead side and finished at 100 per cent success against 67. Robson had noticed both.
“It’s always hard, isn’t it? I think we got quite a bit of pay from the maul, we went forward a bit, and a few of the plays or decisions off the back of it probably put us under pressure. But a lot of credit has to go to our boys, especially in that scrum. It was unbelievable, really, for me to have that platform against that big French pack. That front-row and that front five especially deserve a massive wrap tonight.”
The battle of the back-rows
Tom Willis had the ground raving, 17 carries, 14 tackles, seven defenders beaten and two turnovers on his first return to England since leaving Saracens, but in terms of winning the contest, Gloucester got more from the eight shirt, and from two men wearing it. Jack Clement matched Willis’s seventeen carries and led everyone with 107 metres; Will Trenholm came off the bench and scored twice in four minutes.
“Tom was brilliant as well, he’s non-stop, great to play against him and great to see him again,” Robson said. “But Clem and Trenners were unbelievable. They gave us such good go-forward, complemented each other really well, and they were relentless. That’s what we said we had to be for eighty minutes, and those two epitomised it.”
Then the number I’d been carrying around since the stats landed. Lucu, a scrum-half captaining from 10, kicked 803 metres on the night, within 140 of the entire Gloucester side. I told Robson I’d never seen a stat like it, and I’ve been around a while.
“Ridiculous,” he said. “Ridiculous. He’s brilliant. I genuinely think he’s one of the best nines in the world. I know he was playing a bit of a hybrid today, but absolutely brilliant. I’ve got the utmost respect for him and it was great to play against him. He’s massive for that Bordeaux team; he really keeps them ticking, he’s such a calm head and he kicks his goals, and even when they’re off it a little bit he’s the one driving it. Pretty impressive.”
Gloucester’s growth as a team
The last question was the one that matters for the season. Last year’s Gloucester wouldn’t have drawn that game; they’d have lost it, and probably by some distance. Robson didn’t pretend otherwise.
“Potentially not. We spoke about it briefly in the huddle at the end. There was an overriding feeling of disappointment with the draw, and we said, how good is that, to have that feeling? Drawn against the double champs at home, no one really gave us a shot before the game, and we come away with a draw and disappointment.
“That just shows where we’re at as a group, the belief we’ve got in each other, and how much more we can bring out of each other. We’ll reflect, and I’m sure we’ll be pretty happy with the result come Monday. But the overriding feeling being disappointment is a massive, massive positive omen for this group.”
Gloucester are top of the PREM, they’ve just shared 10 tries with the champions of Europe, and their scrum-half left Kingsholm annoyed about it. That’s a different club from the one that finished last season.