'Sky the limit' for treble winners Bath
Captain Ben Spencer says the "sky is the limit" for Bath after they ended a 29-year wait for a Premiership trophy and clinched a historic treble.Spencer lifted the trophy at Allianz Stadium Twickenham on Saturday after a tense, closely-fought 23-21 final victory against Leicester Tigers.Bath added their first league title since 1996 to Premiership Rugby Cup and European Challenge Cup silverware won earlier this campaign."The future of this club is unbelievably bright, no matter who pulls on the shirt it's next man in," Spencer said."The work ethic is second to none. As long as we keep our feet on the floor and keep on wanting to get better, the sky is the limit for this team."
Spencer joined Bath in 2020 after nine years with Saracens where he won seven major trophies - including four Premiership titles - through the London club's era of dominance.The 32-year-old was made captain in 2022-23 as head of rugby Johann van Graan's tenure at Bath began, just months after the club had finished bottom of the league the season before."The amount of hard work this has taken to turn the ship around... we were bottom three years ago," Spencer said."I can't credit [Van Graan] enough, he's been absolutely brilliant. If we [understand] there's always an opportunity to get better then I'm really excited for the next couple of years."Bath narrowly lost to Northampton in the Twickenham showpiece last June but were overwhelming favourites this time around. They ended the regular league campaign 11 points clear at the top of the table and wrapped up top spot and a home semi-final in the play-offs with three rounds of games still to play.Scrum-half Spencer said he mainly felt "relief" at the final whistle because of the prolonged build-up."To get the mindset right when you qualify early as we did is quite tough," he said. "I played that semi-final in my head hundreds of times. Day in, day out it was 'who are we going to get?' It's a hard place to be mentally."It's relief for me, the players, staff and fans."
'There's no end point to Bath journey'
Van Graan said his side had done the "unthinkable" in winning the league title three years after he took over.The squad will now go their separate ways over the summer, with international commitments, including the British and Irish Lions tour.They will not reconvene until a pre-season camp in September but Van Graan said the ambition to keep getting better will not diminish."I'll set the vision we'll align as a group and we'll take whatever's next - champion teams are teams that win things multiple times," Van Graan said."The day you stand still is the day somebody catches you."I learnt in my time at [South African club] Bulls when I was part of a team that won a lot, you must always train like number two because the other guys are coming."We'll look at ourselves and we'll go again. It's a journey, there's no end point."Additional reporting by Alex Hoad
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