Cherry Pickings: Gloucester-Bath is most heated derby in the Premiership (From Gazette Series)

Gloucester Rugby column by ex-England star Alastair Hignell

10:11am Thursday 16th February 2012 in Gloucestershire Sport

IT'S a fixture guaranteed to banish the winter blues.

The Recreation Ground will be packed to capacity for the most heated local derby in the Aviva Premiership. Matches between Bath and Gloucester have always been bywords for raw, red-blooded rugby, raucous partisanship and earthy humour. Saturday’s showdown should be no exception.

Round these parts, you don’t have to be able to spell to know that Bath is a four-letter word. The rest of the rugby world may have regarded the blue-black-and-white dominance of club rugby in the eighties and nineties with awe and respect, but for fans of Gloucester and Bristol the emotion was somewhat baser.

As the Bath of Barnes and Hill, Guscott and Halliday, not to mention Chilcott and Redman garnered trophy after trophy in the domestic game and supplied player after player, and coach after coach, to the international arena, it was nigh on impossible for rival fans not to be consumed by envy.

There’s no doubt that Bath were first out of the blocks when it came to adapting to the demands of the modern game. By the time league rugby was introduced, in 1987, Bath were already setting the pace in player recruitment, coaching and conditioning. By the time the game turned professional, in 1995, Bath had become the leading club in the world. And, especially, if you came from Gloucester or Bristol, that hurt.

While Bristol acted like rabbits caught in the headlights of Bath’s dazzling rise to prominence, Gloucester kept their eyes on the road. True, there has been the odd pile-up – the 1990 John Player Cup Final was a car-crash of a match that scarred the Gloucester psyche for years – but recent signs suggest that not only are the Cherry and Whites starting to draw level with their more celebrated rivals but even that they are starting to overtake them.

There’s not much to choose between their League positions. Both are in the wrong half of the table after losing several matches this campaign that they ought to have won. Both were disappointing in the Heineken Cup, with opening set-backs leaving them with far too much ground to make up in the later pool stages, and both have tasted victory in just six of their 14 Premiership matches to date. Eighth-placed Gloucester are, however, four points clear of ninth-placed Bath.

Just as importantly for both teams the log-jam in the middle of the Premiership table means that there is far more to play for in this fixture than West Country bragging rights. Gloucester’s 27-24 defeat of Northampton last weekend, coupled with Exeter’s win over Leicester, means that only four points separate Northampton, third in the table but well adrift of leaders Harlequins and Saracens, from Gloucester.

If the Cherry and Whites can complete the double over Bath – their 23-6 victory at Kingsholm in September was far less comfortable than the scoreline suggested – they will be back within touching distance of a play-off place with a real prospect of qualifying for next season’s Heineken Cup.

Even more importantly, given the nature of the rivalry between the two sides, a Gloucester win would mean the opposite for Bath. They need to win to have any chance of salvaging their season. No pressure, then.

Do you agree with Alastair? Have your say below.

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