Barring the remarkable, when Nick Abendanon runs out for Bath against Northampton on Friday evening it will be his last game at the Rec. After eight seasons and more than 200 games, the 27-year-old is off to Clermont Auvergne in the summer, swapping the beautiful stadium by the Avon for a concrete bowl in the Massif Central and one of the more raucous audiences in world rugby.
Abendanon has long been a favourite at the Rec, but to play there again this season Bath need a home semi-final, and to get that they will have to beat Northampton on Friday – something they have not managed in five encounters – and probably with a bonus point. Add another win at Harlequins on the final day of the regular season and Abendanon could even get the chance of adding to the 185 points he has so far scored for the club he joined straight from school.
He could have stayed. Bath would have been keen to have him, but if Abendanon plays at the Rec again it will be in the Heineken Cup and for Clermont. "I'll miss it, incredibly," says Abendanon before explaining the reasoning behind the move. It amounts to simple logic, hammered home this week when two Bath backs, George Ford and Anthony Watson, were named among the five players shortlisted for the Premiership's young player of the year award.
"There were a couple of things," explains Abendanon, "I had two surgeries during the summer and the shoulder operation kept me out for the first six weeks of the season. Anthony Watson was playing full-back incredibly well and when I came back fit I was struggling to get back in the team. It was something I hadn't been used to; I'd been first-choice full-back for such a long time."
It was a rude awakening and the offer from Clermont clearly arrived at the right time. Abendanon has since regained his place, with Watson currently starting from the bench, but when Neil McIlroy, Clermont's director of recruitment, got in touch Abendanon had to decide whether he wanted to hang on as Bath built a new team "looking to the future and not us old guard", or join a side which, even allowing for last Saturday's humbling defeat by Saracens, is one of the most consistent in Europe.
Clearly Watson's early-season form was instrumental. "With his ability to beat someone and his searing pace – he's very quick, right up there with Christian Wade – it's only a matter of getting him some space. This guy has some good gas," says Abendanon, who predicts a considerable future for the 20-year-old.
The irony is that not so long ago, there were plenty saying the same about Abendanon. Back in 2007 the then 20-year-old played twice for England, even getting a call-up to the squad on the eve of the World Cup final against South Africa. Since then nothing; and that is the another reason behind the move to France.
"I've signed contracts in England hoping my England career would kick off, but this time I couldn't see the point of waiting around with the other full backs playing so well," says Abendanon, conceding that it is the very thing which makes him so popular at the Rec that has counted against him at Test level. Since Brian Ashton departed, no England coach has been prepared to gamble on a reputation "that I could make something out of nothing and then make two howling errors". It's a reputation which, Abendanon feels, should have been binned long ago. "It took me three or four years to shake off the stigmas, but it's something the commentators latch on to.
"They don't see you week in and week out and I'm the sort of player who backs himself to try things other players wouldn't. Sometimes it wouldn't come off, sometimes it would."
There are plenty who now reckon that Abendanon is saving his best for last, which in terms of Bath picking up their first silverware in six seasons is pretty handy, especially as on Friday could easily be the first of three meetings with Northampton before the end of the season. Both sides are already through to the European Challenge final at Cardiff and, depending on how the next two games pan out, could yet meet again in the play-offs. As Abendanon says: "Three confrontations in five weeks … by the end of that we'll be getting to know each other pretty well."
