Bath boss Mike Ford insisted he did not want “a sympathy vote” for his team after their European Champions Cup campaign ended with a tense quarter-final exit against Leinster in Dublin yesterday.
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Centre Ian Madigan booted Bath out of Europe as his six successful penalties condemned them to an 18-15 defeat, although the visitors claimed touchdowns by England fly-half George Ford and captain Stuart Hooper.
George Ford, back at the Aviva Stadium just five weeks after being part of an England team beaten during Ireland’s march to the Six Nations title, scored a brilliant solo try and also made a break that ended with Hooper breaching Leinster’s defence, while he kicked a conversion and late penalty as Bath pressed.
Bit tighter in the end than they would have liked but another semi final for Leinster. Well done lads. #nottheworstpoorseasonisit
— Brian O’Driscoll (@BrianODriscoll) April 4, 2015
But Bath ultimately gave Madigan too many chances to punish them and he delivered a 100 per cent success-rate to book Leinster a semi-final appointment with either Toulon or Wasps, who meet on the Mediterranean coast today.
“Make no mistake, we don’t want any sympathy vote here. We should have won that game today,” head coach Mike Ford said. “There is a lot of disappointment. The first-half performance, especially, we are a lot better than that.
“We made quite a few line-breaks, but there is more than one way to win a game. It is not just about scoring tries. They kicked their penalties and fair play to them. That last 10-15 minutes, I was convinced we were going to win the game, but it’s small margins.”
George Ford reflected the sense of disappointment permeating Bath’s camp after they failed to secure a first top-flight European semi-final appearance since 2006.
“Irish teams are very good at squeezing teams and milking penalties and building a score that way,” he said. “We should have handled that better than we did.
“We wanted to play with a good tempo so we could make linebreaks and be a threat in attack. Ultimately, we need to start getting better at taking these chances.”
