IT was important to go to Parma and win the game so, as a club, we could get back to winning ways before Friday night’s return to Aviva Premiership action with the visit of Bath to Sixways.

Bath had a really tough Heineken Cup game against Montpellier on Sunday, winning 16-13, so we should have a slight advantage in terms of freshness.

Our game was on Saturday so we’ve had an extra day to recover and, fingers crossed, we can take advantage of that over the 80 minutes.

We have to be ruthless and ensure we give them nothing.

Bath had their first-choice team playing which hopefully can also give us an advantage as our guys who have mostly featured in the Premiership games were rested.

However, the Bath guys are professional athletes and their recovery rates will be quick — they will be pretty fresh come Friday night and we will have to play with an intensity and at a level they will struggle at.

We need to get ahead early on and keep the pressure up throughout.

The beauty of the Amlin Challenge Cup for us is we can rest our guys who mostly play in the Premiership, which means they should hit the ground running on Friday. The group of players I have been involved with for the Amlin Cup games over the last fortnight are very confident and we are happy playing attacking rugby together.

Hopefully, that will transfer over to the guys picked to face Bath, but it is obviously much more difficult to attack Premiership teams than it is some of the European sides we play.

However, the squad as a whole should take confidence from how we have been attacking in recent weeks.

Friday night fixtures are always great at Sixways and, as a club, we are all really excited about the Bath match. We hope to have lots of support as we really enjoy playing in games under the floodlights on home soil.

I like the away trips in Europe, even though our visit to Italy was a bit of a nightmare with travel delays on the way home due to the fog.

It is always great to experience a different culture, the surroundings and food — but it is also good to get to know the boys better.

Obviously, we spend a lot of time together in the days when training at Sixways, but it was nice to have a few days together and chat about things other than rugby.