Bath Rugby Team

USA Eagles captain, John van der Giessen, will make his first Heineken Cup appearance on Saturday, when Bath Rugby welcome Aironi Rugby to the Recreation Ground for the fifth Pool 4 game of the tournament, kick-off 2.30pm.

Forwards Coach, Martin Haag, spoke of the need for the team to keep building on their recent performances, and to keep the winning momentum going.

“Our mind-set going into this weekend’s game is that we need to improve on our performance week on week. We’ve got some big games coming up and, while it may be unlikely that we will proceed further in this competition, we want to have pride in our performance.

“We had 11 visits to the Leeds 22 on Saturday. If we can make that many visits against Aironi and finish off three or four more chances, then that’s a good improvement. If we can continue to improve following our two wins at the start of the New Year, then who knows what might happen in the rest of the season.

“Aironi are on an upward trend so it’s important we get our heads around that and prepare as well as we can. They have a very strong pack, including international players, so we will need to be at our best to control them.

“They will make it difficult for us, but it’s just making sure we get our processes right. We are improving on our performances week on week, and we want to keep building on those so that we have some momentum going forward, to get us back playing our best rugby.”

Bath Rugby team to face Aironi Rugby

15. Nick Abendanon

14. Matt Banahan

13. Olly Barkley

12. Shontayne Hape

11. Tom Biggs

10. Butch James

9. Michael Claassens

1. David Barnes

2. Pieter Dixon

3. David Wilson

4. Stuart Hooper

5. John van der Giessen

6. Ben Skirving

7. Lewis Moody

8. Luke Watson ( c )

Replacements

16. Ross Batty

17. Duncan Bell

18. Aaron Jarvis

19. Ignacio Fernandez Lobbe

20. Josh Ovens

21. Chris Cook

22. Sam Vesty

23. Jack Cuthbert