MY SON Max was a mascot for Bath’s match against Northampton last week and, like myself, I’m sure many Bath supporters were left frustrated by the final outcome at the Rec.

The Bath players will surely have reflected on that game and felt they should have got a lot more after it.

People talk about the best team winning, but what that match showed is that you don’t have to be the best team for 80 minutes to win.

I felt Bath had enough there to win the game, but when push comes to shove, did they really believe they could win it?

If they did believe, then they should have, but I just wonder if what happened was partly a result of what happened last season.

Matches at the top end of rugby are often won in the last three or four minutes.

For the last two minutes against Saints, Bath had them on the ropes, but they just didn’t have enough to get the score that would have turned it their way.

Before that, they had kicked away possession far too easily and if they had really been confident, would they have done that?

Ultimately, their kicking game was very poor and they will have looked at that in the wake of the match.

I don’t know whether they were being instructed to kick as much as they did, but they lacked any variety to their kicks and made it easy for Northampton to come back at them.

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