The infamous incident which saw Gavin Henson punched to the floor by new Bath team-mate Carl Fearns was the fault of the rest of the squad, it has been claimed.
Former England lock Dave Attwood, who was at Bath at the time of the bar fracas in 2013, has revealed it is the wider squad who should take responsibility for strong-arming Henson into drinking on the club social when he had insisted he did not want to.
Henson had arrived following a one-season spell with London Welsh and had been with Bath for just a month for pre-season when the infamous bust-up occurred and hit the headlines.
Attwood told RugbyPass Offload : "We'd basically not been very good people at all. Gav had stressed that he wasn’t drinking on our team social to the Thatchers factory, he was like, ‘no, I’m not drinking lads, I'm not going to'.
“We were like, ‘have a drink, have a drink’. We basically carried on until he broke and then he couldn’t turn it off. It was entirely our fault that it happened and we take full responsibility for it but honestly, he was so much fun, so much fun until like 11pm and it was, ‘alright, that’s enough now Gav. Thanks, you have been great’. But he just accelerated, carried on going.
“At one point the whole Bath squad was chasing him around Bath. A bit like Football Factory, he was shouting abuse and then running away." Making a punch gesture, he added: "And then we were in this bar and he said something to Carl Fearns and Fearns was like 'na'. Out like a light."
Both players were fined and given warnings by Bath after the incident, following the emergence of video footage.
Henson, now 40, has previously said the incident came about after he'd had at least 20 pints.
Attwood went on to explain how Gary Gold, the Bath coach at the time, reacted when he hauled the lock and hooker Rob Webber into his office for an explanation after seeing reports of the incident in the media.
"The following morning Gary Gold called me and Rob Webber into the office and he was, ‘what happened last night?’ The footage was all over The Sun, it had been released and there was a big hoo-ha. He was like, ‘what the f*** happened lads?’ ‘Honestly Gary, we wish we knew mate, we're not sure, we must have been in the other bar or something like that’. ‘Really, were you?’
“He turns around his screen monitor on his MacBook and it’s the CCTV footage with me and Webbs stood at the bar and Gav and Fearnsy stood next to us. Like, the whole thing happened in front of us and Gary was like, ‘in the other room, were you?’ So bad."
Asked if Henson and Fearns ever reconciled, Attwood added: "I think so, yeah. Gav was super sheepish about it, but to be honest a large degree of the squad needed to take a bit of responsibility for that because he had been quite adamant that he wasn't going to drink and it was only the fact there were 50 blokes baying for blood that he eventually cracked and had a beer or two. Then suddenly we were like 'we realise why you were so adamant you weren't going to drink'. We take responsibility for that."
Attwood, whose England career ended with his final cap in November 2016, is heading back to Bath for the 2022/23 season from Bristol.
