Everything is relative and, given the events of the past week, the mud-covered men of Bath were grateful for small mercies. Not only did no one drown in a sea of liquid ooze, but they can look forward to a Heineken Cup quarter-final, having finished on top of a relentlessly competitive pool. If the prospect of an away tie in Leicester, thanks to an inferior try count, is less than ideal, it is something to cling to amid the toxic fall-out of Matt Stevens' failed drug test.
Nor can it truthfully be said that Stevens' absence made a tremendous difference in conditions better suited to a rubber-clad Jacques Cousteau than a prop who favours harder, faster ground. If the lowest-scoring Heineken Cup game of all time (and there have been 971 of them) proved anything, it was that teams often gain from adversity.
"Things like this do stick in the back of people's minds," said Bath's director of rugby, Steve Meehan, before confirming that the Stevens case had hit some squad members "like a sledgehammer". The sight of several raised Bath arms at the final whistle was a clear indication that in the circumstances, the home side felt they had done a very creditable job, not least the replacement prop David Flatman, who bolstered a shaky home scrummage in the second-half.
Stevens might just take the view that watching this game on television was no great sacrifice, as he awaits a two-year ban following his personal calamity. By any standards it was a foul day for playing and watching rugby, among the worst in the history of European competition. A storm of freezing hailstones swept across the city shortly before kick-off, forcing the inhabitants of the open temporary stand to seek cover and making the pitch resemble a sponge sprinkled with icing sugar. Then the real downpour started, reducing the playing surface to a mixture of swamp and skidpan. Weekend gales across Europe had already done Stade no favours; the roof of their coach Guy Novès' house was damaged and his team's flight to England on Saturday was delayed for eight hours.
Apres le deluge, almost inevitably, it boiled down to character and goal-kicking nerve. The scrum-half Byron Kelleher and No8 Shaun Sowerby were outstanding for Toulouse but in contrast to Bath's Butch James, who managed one successful kick from two attempts, the unfortunate Jean-Baptiste Elissalde found the posts as easy to locate as a fancy bistro in Melksham. He missed five of six penalty efforts, one from bang in front. Had he nailed even one of them it would have relegated Bath to an away tie against the unbeaten Cardiff Blues, a prospect which Toulouse must now contemplate. It is the first time since the competition's inception in 1995 that no French side has made a home draw in the quarter-finals.
Wasps' defeat in Castres earlier in the afternoon guaranteed that both teams would qualify for the latter stages. Meehan was adamant, however, that his side were entirely unaware of other results, the upshot being that Bath went through 18 phases at one point without attempting the drop-goal which might have earned them a home quarter-final. Meehan stressed, rightly, that James would have been doing well to get the ball off the ground, let alone fly it through the sticks. "It was like dropping it into a bathtub of water and trying to kick it out," he said.
The increasingly impressive Meehan could also have reminded everyone that his side had suffered a significant loss when their captain, Michael Lipman, was knocked out in the 17th minute, by a sickening clash of heads with one of his team-mates, Matt Banahan. After a five-minute delay the flanker had revived sufficiently to walk to the dressing rooms for treatment to a gashed head, but he was in no fit state to join up with England last night for their warm-weather training trip to Portugal this week.
Lipman is due to undergo examination by England's medical staff but Meehan's preliminary verdict – "I don't expect him to play much part in this week's England training" – appeared to be an understatement. Given that Tom Rees and Lewis Moody are already crocked, the London Irish openside Steffon Armitage is within touching distance of a first international cap and Martin Johnson is ever closer to banging his head against a brick wall somewhere in the Algarve.
Bath are heading to Seville for a mid-season training break, looking to put the Stevens affair behind them.
"I think it's been covered enough," said Meehan, with a shrug. He has not spoken to the player since the story broke. "The players need to get on with how they're going to deal with it," the Australian said. "I'm not going to dwell on it, we're going to move on."
Bath Abendanon; Maddock, Crockett, Berne, Banahan; James, Claassens; Barnes (Flatman, h-t), Mears (Dixon, 66), Bell, Harrison, Hooper, Beattie, Lipman (capt; Scaysbrook, 17), Browne (Faamatuainu, 72).
Pen James.
Toulouse Poitrenaud (Clerc, 72); Médard, Fritz (Ahotaeiloa, 39), Jauzion (capt), Heymans; Elissalde (Du Toit, 63), Kelleher; Human, Servat (Vernet-Basualdo, 66), Lecouls (Perugini, 72), Pelous (Lambouley, 72), Albacete, Bouilhou (Nyanga, 53), Dusautoir, Sowerby.
Pen Elissalde.
Referee A Rolland (Ireland). Attendance 10,600.
