Bath coach Steve Meehan took plenty of positives from their Heineken Cup display against Biarritz on Saturday, despite a 26-19 defeat.
Bath boss thinks they can be a "handful" if they reproduce Cup display in league
Bath coach Steve Meehan took plenty of positives from their display against Biarritz on Saturday, despite losing 26-19 - a result that also ended their participation in this season's Heineken Cup.
Former Rec favourite Iain Balshaw touched down twice for the Basque side whilst Dimitri Yachvili and Takudzwa Ngwenya also scored in a bonus-point win for Biarritz.
Stuart Hooper and Tom Biggs (two) touched down for Bath, who came into the match with a slim chance of reaching the last eight.
They needed to secure a bonus-point win themselves at the Parc des Sports Aguilera whilst hoping that Ulster suffered a shock defeat at Aironi.
However, Ulster also secured a bonus-point win, meaning that they and Biarritz advanced from Pool Four.
Positives
Meehan felt there were plenty of positives his side could take from the encounter and now thinks his side can push for a play-off place in the Aviva Premiership.
He said: "If we return to the Premiership and play rugby like that then we are going to be a handful.
"The rugby itself was fairly evenly shared. At times we got on the front foot and played some good attacking rugby.
"If you look only at our win-loss count in this pool, it looks poor. But we performed better than that indicates.
"In the second-half, both of their tries came from poor tactical kicking that put us under pressure. But we finished off well and kept working for the full 80 minutes. We thoroughly deserved those three tries.
"It's frustrating to have lost, but you must be optimistic after performances like that."
Stern test
The result ensures a home quarter-final for Biarritz and Balshaw said: "We completed our objective that we set at the start of the game. We knew we had a chance of a home quarter-final and delivered it.
"It was a stern test from Bath and it was probably very good to watch. We got four tries but in the last 10 minutes we were probably looking to get a few more tries and were swaying both ways.
"At half-time we said they would come out and play and it was important that we started the way we finished the first half. We took our foot off the gas but are pleased with the result."
