By Glen Leat
October 23 2003

Bath travel to the North East of England on Saturday for their second televised game in a row to face a Newcastle team who have experienced two successive defeats on the road. Unfortunately for the visitors the Falcons have only been beaten once at home in the Premiership in the past 13 months.

Bath have now strung together seven successive Zurich Premiership wins (six this season), a run which began with victory over
Newcastle at the Rec last May and will hope their current record as the Premiership’s best travellers, having secured 13 league points from their three away games so far, can be maintained. 

It is well known that the Bath backs have rarely trained together so far this season because of the need to protect injuries but John Connolly announced on the club's official website that his backline has been involved in some training this week and this can only improve on their disjointed performance last week. 

Bath will be looking to get to the break in front of the Falcons because they have been half time leaders in every game so far this season and then gone  on to victory. As ever there will be pressure on the shoulders of Olly Barkley, who is currently standing second in the Premiership scoring stats with 96 points (Shane Drahm tops this particular league table with 99 points) with a 73% scoring rate from his kicks.

Last week Bath performed poorly in front of the cameras and so on the strength of this the Newcastle supporters will be confident that their team can do the business: I think Bath will maintain their great away form and win by at least five points.

Probable Bath Line Up

15 Matt Perry 14 Brendan Daniel 13 Alex Crockett 12 Olly Barkley 11 Andrew Higgins10 Chris Malone 9  Martyn Wood 1  David Flatman 2 Jonathan Humphreys 3 Duncan Bell 4 Steve Borthwick 5 Rob Fidler 6 Andy Beattie 7 Michael Lipman 8 Zak Feaunati

Newcastle Team

1 Ian Peel 2 Nick Makin 3 Micky Ward 4 Garath Archer 5 Craig Hamilton 6 Jon Dunbar 7 Warren Britz 8 Hugh Vyvyan 9 Hall Charlton 10 Phil Godman 11 Michael Stephenson 12 Mark Mayerhofler 13 Jamie Noon 14 Tom May 15 David Walder

Click on to the Newcastle Falcons site for their perspective on things.

Click here to read about the encounter between Bath and Newcastle earlier in the year.

In preparation for this clash let's have a look at a few recent statistics:

Biggest Win

Last Meetings (Bath scores first)