Ford discusses his pre-seasons preparations

The 2015/16 season is undoubtably going to be one of the most challenging and arduous for our Aviva Premiership sides. With the presence of a home Rugby World Cup the annual LV Cup has been put aside to make room for Europe and that means that rest are few and far between.

When the competition commences the first challenge for a number of sides will be managing without some of their key players that are away representing their respective nations in the Rugby World Cup.

A side that will be losing more than most are Bath Rugby, twelve in total and as Matt Banahan shared ‘most are big character or key decision makers’. This has mean that last year’s Aviva Premiership Finalists have had to address a number of elements during their pre-season, not just players’ conditioning. Developing a new leadership group has been and is a key focus for Mike Ford and Bath’s Head Coach knows that you cannot just throw players in at the deep end when it comes to leadership;

“It isn’t a case of right you are a leader now go and talk to the players… they are learning what to, what needs to be said, how you say it and all of the different elements. Over the last four or five weeks we have had some fantastic growth in these players as leaders and when the other leaders come back we will have two leadership groups because it is important to keep developing and growing the players underneath.”

The forthcoming West Country Challenge Cup fixtures will be a chance to test these new leadership skills in practice and with fairly limited numbers it is a great opportunity for the Bath coaching team to see how other members of the squad will step up after a productive period of training;

“We have developed the less experienced end of the playing squad in terms of the time with the coaches, a lot of one on ones and they’ve been doing a lot more game time in training so they have got more reps in them. You’ll see a side against Gloucester on Sunday is very, very young but this summer is allowing us to make the depth in the squad stronger. As a club, as coaches and as a group of senior player we all sit down each week and outline the critical outcome that we want to achieve from a game. We did that this morning and what we want to try and get out of the game this weekend and hasn't got anything to do with the result, put it that way. If we achieve what we want to achieve and this critical outcome then we will be in a good place to go into the week after when we play Exeter away and that is all we want to do, is to get better every day, every week and every game.” 

This weekend’s West Country Challenge Cup fixture will be played at the Memorial Stadium in Bristol as Kingsholm will be gearing up to host a series of Rugby World Cup matches starting with Tonga versus Georgia on 19th September.

As with any domestic team that are losing a number of individuals to International duty, these pre-season fixtures and the start of the Aviva Premiership season will challenge Bath Rugby however at Farleigh House the mood is high.

On Tuesday it was announced that all four coaches have just signed new four year deals and all, in Mike Ford's words, are 'hungrier than ever' for this season after the denouement to last. The Bath blueprint will not be changing, attacking rugby is the order of the day and it all starts this weekend against their old rivals Gloucester Rugby.