Moody looking forward to season
New Bath captain Lewis Moody says he is looking forward to the new season and wants to hit the ground running with his new team.
Moody is the highest profile player to have moved to the South West club over the course of the summer and he carries a lot of expectations on his shoulders. There were questions over whether he should have been made the skipper but he seems ready and up for the challenge.
Moody had spent a large part of his career at Leicester where he forged good working and personal relationships. Therefore it was a shock to many in the rugby world when he seemed to be drawn in by the riches that Bath had to offer.
There is going to be a lot of pressure on him this season and the huge expectations will not help this. However, he is a good enough player to add weight to his claims and he should play well this year while relishing the captaincy.
Pressure and expectations
Moody has admitted that he was not always the main man at Leicester because of the quality across the entire squad. As captain at Bath he is the person that everyone at the club is going to be looking towards.
There is already enough pressure linked to his game because of the fact he is now one of the best players in the Premiership and an England regular. The fact that people expect him to carry Bath this season will only add to this pressure.
Fans of the club are going to want him to exert his dominance on and off of the field. He is going to have to watch every little word that he says because he will be representing Bath all of the time as the captain and this is sometimes difficult to remember.
Moody said: "It's strange, you get the butterflies when you move to a new place and I got that coming here. I came in on Monday and seeing the changing rooms and meeting all the guys - it's just totally out of my comfort zone. Obviously at Leicester I was comfortable. I knew everything, knew everyone and knew how everything worked, now you almost have to start again."
A Quality Player
It's important not to forget that Moody is still a quality player and no amount of off the field talk or activity is going to change that. He still has a high number of attributes that are going to make him a key player at Premiership level.
He's played enough games to know how to deal with various situations. Pressure will not be new to him and he can use his playing style to keep the team well organised and successful.
The captaincy should only add to his productivity as a player and as an individual. He will have to settle in very quickly though because a lot of other players turn to their skipper for advice and right now these are players that Moody does not know.
Betting advice
Moody should have a very good first season in a Bath shirt. If he takes to the captaincy role like a duck to water then it will mean that Bath are a very organised team and should win a lot of games during the course of the season.
The whole situation that Moody faces has the ability to inspire him and he is too experienced to let it all have a negative effect. He could well bag a few points by the end of the season and is a decent punt to be top scorer at the club by the season's end.
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