The 2009 tournament winners currently top Pool 2 with 18 points and are eight points clear of the Dragons and nine ahead of third-placed Bordeaux-Begles.

Bath have won all four fixtures so far, taking their tally of successive wins in the Amlin Challenge pool stages and Rounds 1 and 2 from when the tournament began as a knockout competition to a staggering 27. Their last defeat prior to the quarter finals came way back in December 2002, when they were edged out 28-26 by Bridgend at Brewery Field.

While a place in the last eight once more looks highly likely regardless of Saturday’s result given that Bath play Bordeaux-Begles on home soil in Round 6, head coach Mike Ford and co will be keen to secure as high a seeding as possible for the quarter-finals. Back-to-back wins of any sort would mean only London Wasps could finish with a better record across all five groups.

The Dragons’ own hopes are still mathematically alive but they are hanging by a thread: scoring four tries and preventing Bath from picking up any sort of bonus point would mean they could still qualify for the quarters, but if they fail to notch the full five points they would have to stop Bath from scoring four tries and finish with a winning margin of at least 16 points to match the reverse scoreline from The Rec back in Round 2. That latter scenario would then have to be followed by a Bath defeat at home to Bordeaux (with the hosts claiming no more than one losing bonus point) and a maximum-point win for themselves at Mogliano in a week’s time.

Both sides go into the fixture on the back of domestic disappointments, with Bath robbed of a brilliant win at Leicester by a try right at the death and the Dragons losing 21-13 at Cardiff Blues on New Years Day having won the home fixture five days earlier.