Gold standard required if Bath are to succeed

Gold’s troops have now gone four league games without a win and remain in eighth place after Christian Wade’s try on the stroke of half-time changed the course of the game.

Bath had taken the early initiative and led 12-3 after 20 minutes through tries from Nick Abendanon and Michael Claassens, but Wade’s trickery, Stephen Jones’ majestic right boot – which gathered 17 points in total – and Chris Bell’s late effort proved too much for the visitors.

Gold said: “I think the table is quite tight this year, if you look at it if you’re a pessimist and see the glass half empty you could think [we’re out of the top-four contention],” he said.

“But we have a good group of rugby players, the attitude is right and I’m certainly not going to be giving up on the top four.

“At 29-15 it doesn’t look like we showed character but I think we did, we started off well and we put them under pressure, but that try just before half-time hurt us there’s no doubt about it.”

Harlequins returned to top spot with a 31-26 bonus-point win over London Welsh – but director of rugby Conor O’Shea was left fuming over the performance of referee Llyr Apgeraint Roberts.

Following a totally one-sided first half Harlequins led 21-6. It should have been far more and a huge defeat for the Welsh seemed likely.

However, in a complete turnaround, Welsh played with great spirit in the second half to reduce the arrears to 24-19 and a remarkable comeback was on the cards before the visitors steadied the ship to run out narrow winners.

O’Shea was nevertheless unhappy with the match official, who he accused of a catalogue of errors.

“I’m unbelievably frustrated, you’d have to go a long way to see worse,” he said of Mr Roberts’ display.

“Everything was wrong – it was incredible. The offside line was irrelevant, trailing runners coming back was irrelevant, backing into the maul, not releasing in the tackle – all irrelevant.

“We have a feedback process for the referees but it’s not actioned upon and it’s very difficult at times.”

Northampton climbed to fourth as they became the first side to beat Exeter Chiefs at Sandy Park in the league this season with a 30-19 win.

Relegation candidates London Irish ripped up the form book by stunning title play-off contenders Gloucester at Kingsholm.