Gloucester take drastic action to halt slide

Weekend Preview

Bath and Gloucester, the two powerhouses of a West Country rugby scene where power is on the blink, could find themselves dumped out of the Heineken Cup this weekend by the Scots, of all people in Christendom.

This would be some achievement: the Scottish performance in Europe has been a joke for years, as the grand total of one quarter-final appearance in 27 attempts illustrates. Yet neither English club can be remotely confident of surviving their respective contests with Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Should Bath lose at Murrayfield today, not even the consolation of a bonus point will help them find a way out of Pool 4. Maximum hauls in the final two pool games, scheduled for mid-January, would give them only 16 points, and no side has qualified for the knock-out phase with less than 19 since the current scoring system was introduced in 2003-04.

Gloucester, who take on Glasgow in Pool 2 at Kingsholm tomorrow, find themselves in a worse position still, given their miserable haul of four points from their three fixtures to date.

Bath prevailed over Edinburgh at the Recreation Ground last weekend, but it was a close-run thing. While the Premiership club's coach, Steve Meehan, believes there has been a turning of the corner – "Last week reinforced the good things we've been working on; there is a definite shift of attitude, a greater sense of freedom when we are playing," he said yesterday – Murrayfield will be a different proposition, not least because the lack of anything resembling a crowd tends to unnerve visiting teams unused to playing in a vacuum.

For their part, Gloucester are in a rare old state, having been thumped 33-11 in Glasgow eight days ago. Hence the drastic surgery performed by the head coach Bryan Redpath, who recalls the England internationals Olly Morgan and Tom Voyce (left) to his back division and promotes Paul Doran-Jones, who made an England debut from the back end of beyond during the autumn, to the starting front row at the expense of the All Black prop Greg Somerville.

"I was disappointed after Glasgow, no question," Redpath said. "But we're back at home, it's key for us and we have to react. We were hurting after last week's game and rightly so. I haven't even looked at the group standings. It's not about that for me now. It's about this performance and winning the game."

London Irish, who occupy a far healthier position in Pool 6, are hoping for a scar-free return match with Brive after last week's fisticuffs in the Correze. Delon Armitage, badly missed by England last month, returns to the Exiles' squad for the first time since crocking his shoulder in September.