Du Toit hat-trick secures Bath home semi-final after two-point win against Leicester

Bath-Leicester is about as earthy a rivalry as it gets, and, boy, in this era of free-flowing, almost surreal, rugby, here we had a proper throwback to times past. Brutal. And with this hardest of wins, Bath, the champions, have chiselled out the right to play at home in Saturday’s semi-final.

You think Bath-Leicester is earthy? Prepare for next week, when Northampton host Leicester (earthiest of them all?) and Bath will take on Exeter. Two semis, two derbies. Forget about the razzmatazz. This is why most of us fell in love with rugby.

Not exactly of the West Country earth, but Thomas du Toit has been reckoned for a while to be Bath’s MVP, maybe the Prem’s. When a tighthead scores a hat-trick, it seems safe to conclude the type of contest it was – and you would not be wrong.

“This wasn’t the game for pretty rugby,” said Johann van Graan, Bath’s head coach. “This was going to be a set-piece battle, an aerial battle. Both teams attacked and defended really well five yards out.”

Leicester came close, George Pearson’s try a minute or so before time, earning Orlando Bailey, formerly of Bath, a chance to pull the scores level with the conversion. He hit the post, but it mattered not. Leicester needed to win to leapfrog Bath into a home semi-final.

After the sweltering climes of the penultimate round, this was a return to something more, how shall we put this, traditionally English. Persistent rain and wind whipping across the Avon – if it hadn’t been for the green stuff on the pitch, this might as well have been the Rec of the 20th century. The rugby bore more than a passing similarity.

Seven tries in the match, all of them stemming from attacking lineouts. The prettiest – or least agricultural – was scored by Joe Cokanasiga, who finished fearsomely when Santi Carreras performed a neat loop round Max Ojomoh after some heavy-duty work by the Bath pack from one of those lineouts.

That was Bath’s third try and earned them a 17-10 lead, which Jack van Poortvliet’s try, Leicester’s second, cancelled out just before the break. Another penalty sent to the corner, another lineout, a bit more muscularity at close quarters and Leicester’s scrum-half slipped round the fringes.

Leicester’s first try, the game’s first, was also scored by a back, albeit from another attacking lineout. Van Poortvliet went blind from the subsequent series of drives and James O’Connor put over Bailey. O’Connor, back in the saddle at 10 after his injury, was accurate from the tee, landing a penalty early in the second quarter.

For Bath, Carreras, stepping in at 10 for the injured Finn Russell, missed the conversion of Cokanasiga’s try and he, too, hit the post with the first of Du Toit’s pair of tries in the first quarter. These tries were as you might expect – penalty to corner, lineout, ferocious drives, the most ferocious of which were those of the Springbok tighthead, who would not be stopped on his mission to the line.

Three tries to two it may have been, but 17-17 at half-time was probably about right. So Bath made it four tries to two with Du Toit’s hat-trick 10 minutes into the second half. Variation. This try came not directly from an attacking lineout, although there had been one to start the period of pressure. This time a couple of tapped penalties were the source, but the theme was maintained. A siege of pick-and-goes for minute upon minute and Du Toit, once again, completed the last few inches to the line.

For all Bath’s close-quarter ferocity, though, the feeling was that the Tigers had an edge at the set piece. This they made tell in that final half-hour, disrupting a couple of Bath’s next attacking lineouts and earning further penalties at the scrum. Bath’s defence held for much of what followed, but as the clock ticked down Leicester cranked it up once more. Cokanasiga saw yellow for the umpteenth penalty on the Bath line. Now Leicester were tapping their penalties, gaining inch after inch, until they went wide, and Solomone Kata put Pearson over.

Perhaps Bailey should have drop-kicked the conversion as Leicester needed to score again. As it was, the Tigers could not play their way out from the restart. The champions had their home semi-final.