BATH prop Nathan Catt says his team are targeting three Premiership wins on the bounce ahead of Friday night’s clash against struggling Newcastle Falcons, writes JONATHAN LEIGHFIELD.
The Blue, Black and Whites picked up the first of those three wins with a 28-13 success over Worcester Warriors last weekend and travel to Tyneside in a Champions Cup place.
Catt is pleased to be back to winning ways after a series of Premiership Cup defeats, but insists his team will only be satisfied if they gain maximum points from their next two games.
“We’re pleased to finally get a win, but we spoke about coming into this Premiership block targeting three consecutive wins and building some momentum up," said Catt.
“We’ve had a six-day turnaround and we move straight on to Newcastle. It’s a big challenge but one we’re excited about."
Despite the Falcons' lowly league position, Catt knows Newcastle have the weapons to hurt his team and insists Bath have a plan to come away with the spoils.
He said: “We know they’ve got some very dangerous runners, a good set-piece and some big forwards that graft pretty hard.
“We’re expecting them to pass the ball quite a bit in our half and they’ve got a very good kicking game in their own.
“Toby Flood orchestrates the game really well so defensively, we’re going to try and put some line-speed on them to give them limited time to move the ball.
“In attack, we’ll try and give ourselves some really quick breakdowns and keep hold of the ball to play some half-decent rugby, hopefully."
Earlier this month, Bath were heavily beaten on Newcastle’s artificial pitch in the Premiership Cup, but Catt says that nowadays the playing surface is irrelevant.
“When the plastic pitches first started coming in, we spoke about it a lot more, whereas now there’s only a few guys that struggle on them. We just prepare as we would normally," said Catt.
“The kickers might change what they’re doing, but for the rest of us, it doesn’t make a huge amount of difference."
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