Bath seek end to Premiership drought against old rivals Leicester
Bath take on Leicester in the Premiership final on Saturday, bidding to be crowned champions of England for the first time since 1996 in the latest chapter of a storied rugby rivalry.
The West Country side were the dominant force from the 1980s until the mid-1990s before Leicester took charge, becoming champions in four straight seasons around the turn of the century.
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The clubs have been English champions 17 times between them, Leicester most recently in 2022, but Bath have not been top dogs for 29 years.
Bath suffered an agonising 25-21 loss to Northampton at Twickenham last year -- their third defeat in play-off finals.
Bath and Scotland fly-half Finn Russell said to his coach, Johann van Graan, after the game: "We'll just have to do it next year now."
Van Graan's side have already ended their 17-year wait for silverware by winning this season's Premiership Rugby Cup and the Challenge Cup.
But the Premiership title is the one they really want.
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South African Van Graan, whose team reached Saturday's final at Twickenham with a 34-20 victory over local rivals Bristol, said last year's disappointment would not change his approach.
"We'll stick to the same process this week," he said. "A final is a one-off.
"We have worked incredibly hard to get back to this position to go back to Twickenham, a year on from Northampton."
This time, there is greater expectation on Bath given their dominance in the regular season -- they finished 11 points clear of second-placed Leicester.
- Bath belief -
Bath captain Ben Spencer insisteed his side are now better-prepared to win the final.
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"Everyone feels different. This group's been through enough now and played in enough big games to know how the week needs to feel and look," he said.
"It's taken a lot of hard work from the group. That's one huge thing that Johann brought in, turning hope into belief and this group believes now and believes we can win big games."
Leicester, Bath's great rivals during their glory years, are hunting a record-extending 12th English title in the first Premiership final between the two giants.
Michael Cheika's men booked their place with a 21-16 victory over Sale in the play-off semi-finals.
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It is a dramatic improvement from the 2023/24 campaign, when they finished eighth in the table.
The former Australia coach, who will be leaving his role at the end of the season after one campaign in charge, admitted Bath are favourites.
Bath humbled the Tigers 43-15 last month to complete a league double this season.
"I know we will be doubted and probably for good reason from the results and the table," the 58-year-old Australian told BBC Radio Leicester.
He added: "We have strong self belief internally and that will be something that will be really important. That is something we have built up over the season.
"But this is a good opportunity for us to use that belief in ourselves, because what that gives you is a hand in knowing what you will have to do."
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'Are you not entertained?' Russell Crowe's Maximus famously bellowed to the Colosseum crowd in the 2000 film 'Gladiator.' But for decades, kiss cams have been posing a different question to U.S. sports fans and concertgoers: 'Are you not the entertainment?' Whether lighthearted distraction or comic relief, the ubiquitous arena and stadium feature is as American as apple pie — or at least as American as baking an apple pie and posting it on social media. Live competition and performance offer us communal experience on a massive scale, but they also offer a chance to make memories and — with the aid of kiss cams — to become part of the entertainment ourselves. For a few back-to-back moments, as the camera zeroes in on its various targets, fans watch with curiosity, anticipation, excitement and maybe even self-conscious dread. 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'What hilarity!! (by hilarity I mean offensive homophobia). Enough with this stupid trend.' Later, McCarthy — now sporting director for the USL Championship's Phoenix Rising FC — told the San Francisco Chronicle: "If there are gay people who are coming to a game and seeing something like that, you can't assume they're comfortable with it. If you're even making a small group of people ... feel like outcasts, then you're going against what makes your model successful." Before long, franchises were striving to be more inclusive, and in 2015, MLB's New York Mets told the Huffington Post they would no longer feature opposing players in their kiss cam segments; that same year, the Dodgers included a gay couple in its kiss cam. 'Kiss cams are an important metric in measuring how acceptable certain people are in a given community,' said Stephanie Bonvissuto, an adjunct assistant professor of women's and gender studies at Hunter College and Brooklyn College, both part of the City University of New York system. In early 2017, the Ad Council's 'Love Has No Labels' campaign produced a commercial featuring kiss cam footage from that year's NFL Pro Bowl in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people had been killed seven months earlier in a mass shooting at gay nightclub Pulse. 'Kiss Cams have been a part of sports culture for years,' the opening text read, but at that game, it continued, they 'became part of something bigger.' The images showed pairs of individuals, outlined by a heart, broadcast on Camping World Stadium's giant screens. Friends were featured. So, too, were same-sex and interracial couples. Then the camera zoomed in on two women in the stands, one of them wearing a shirt reading 'Orlando survivor.' 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The presumed authenticity of couples' raw, unrehearsed reactions is key, too, he said. 'So much of our entertainment is highly mediated, edited and packaged for our consumption,' he said. It doesn't always play out as planned – and not all of it is necessarily genuine, thanks to some sports teams' creative minds. Many couples share crowd-pleasing kisses. Others, not so much. Some, snubbed by their companions, stomp off in a huff or peck adjacent fans instead, while youthful pairs looking to lock lips are thwarted by chaperoning adults. Whether any of it is staged doesn't matter much. Fans and audiences alike have enjoyed their moment in the limelight. Resnick, of 15 Seconds of Fame, recalled a moment in June 2024 after a Dallas Mavericks loss in game five of the NBA Finals. The arena cameras zeroed on a fan tearful over the outcome. 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