By Leipziger
January 28 2011

So this Saturday we return to cup action at Bath, hoping to keep alive hopes of reaching the Anglo-Welsh Cup semi-finals for the first time.

We are currently top of pool one, although with only four points separating the teams it's all to play for.  A win this weekend would put us in a good position. The other games to look out for are Exeter v Leicester on Saturday afternoon, Cardiff v Ospreys on the evening and then on Sunday Wasps v Harlequins.

We have only played Bath once before in the cup, back in the fourth round of what was then the Tetley's Bitter Cup in January 1999.  In front of the Sky cameras at KP, the Bathplugs led 6-22 at half-time thanks to tries from Russell Earnshaw, Mike Catt and captain Richard Webster before a Ross Beattie scored helped us get it back to 22-22.

Unless I'm Murray Walker (very much mistaken), the KP scoreboard only had three 2s at that time, so one had to be put halfway across the two rows.  Jonny Wilkinson's sixth penalty won the game for us though.

The Falcons went on to beat West Hartlepool, Saracens and Richmond before losing to Wasps in the final, before winning two cups in the noughties, while Bath have only reached the final once since, when they lost to Leeds in 2005.  They are still waiting to recapture the glory days of the 1980s and 1990s when they won the cup ten times in 13 seasons.

As we approach the latest day out at the Premiership's most picturesque stadium, I find myself thinking back to Rec trips past.

The first time I visited Bath was back on the last day of 2002/03, when we were already safe, but Bath needed a win to have any chance of avoiding relegation – they got it and stayed up.  Since I managed to scrounge tickets from the players' allocation, wor then lass found herself sitting beside James Grindal's girlfriend, and they had a chat since I don't think either was that interested in the rugby.

The following season I travelled down to South West on the supporters' club coach.  I remember that as some guy handed around our tickets for he match, the bloke opposite me said to a his pal “Everyone has nice tickets except us”.  His friend asked what was wrong with a photo of the West Stand, or an action shot of Jonny Wilkinson and Liam Botham, and I can't remember the cynic's response – probably didn't like his negativity being challenged with logic.

Presumably this guy, no idea who he was, wasn't at Sale in 2001/02 when the tickets were just white card with the match details printed on.  Not that there is anything wrong with that.

We lost that day too, we were pretty rubbish.

Not so on the second weekend of 2004/05 – tries from Tom May (2), Michael Stephenson and Mike McCarthy gave us a bonus point win, despite May and Luke Gross being sin-binned and Phil Dowson getting a red card.

After that it was a few years of defeats, normally at lunchtime with internationals on TV in the afternoon.  In 2005/06, Tracywilko was visiting a friend in Bath and they both came to the game, afterwards we were drinking in the town and she kept badgering me about not missing my train, to prevent a repeat of The Watford Incident.  I didn't miss it.

The following season we were all in The Saracen's Head watching England after the Falcons' match, and if you thought the service at KP was bad – the queue at the bar was at least three or four-deep but only two people were serving.  After about 20 minutes Ruck n Roll came to find me, thinking I'd either ran off or been trampled!  We did finally get served though.

Then there was our last visit to the Rec for a 15-a-side game, in October 2009.  Fortunately I'm not doing the fanzone this weekend, as I don't know if I'll be welcome back in the Bath pressroom/box after jumping up and down and shouting at Micky Young through the slightly-open window as he legged it from our half to score one of our four tries in only our second win there since 1997.

I am happy to see the Falcons taking this game seriously, as I for one would love to see us win this cup and get back into the Heineken.  Looking forward to seeing van der Heijden if he gets off the bench too.  The shirts worn by Eves and Tulip suggest to me Alan Tait has no idea how to get the best out of these two, though we’ll see how they actually line up.

Our team is as follows:

15  Alex Tait

14  Luke Fielden

13  Luke Eves

12  Tane Tu’ipulotu

11  Gcobani Bobo

10  Jimmy Gopperth

9  Micky Young

1  Jon Golding

2  Matt Thompson

3  Euan Murray

4c  James Hudson

5  Tim Swinson

6  Mark Wilson

7  Will Welch

8  Ally Hogg

Replacements

16  Rob Vickers

17  Grant Shiells

18  James Hall

19  Andrew van der Heijden

20  Ed Williamson

21  Chris Pilgrim

22  James Fitzpatrick

23  Joel Hodgson