EXPERIENCED head Matt Banahan is calling for a return to Bath’s high standards as they return to Premiership action tomorrow evening.

Todd Blackadder’s side suffered back-to-back defeats for the first time last week as they embarked on their Anglo-Welsh Cup campaign.

However, with league action making a comeback to The Rec this evening, as Bath host local rivals Bristol, Banahan is looking to put those performances behind them and move forward briskly.

“It was not the result or the performance we wanted,” he said.

“In this game, we have got an opportunity to learn very quickly and get back on the pitch and make amends for it.

“Luckily enough, we look back at ourselves and what mistakes we made and we can draw a line in the sand and look forward to playing Bristol in the Premiership.

“We’ve started the competition really well and given ourselves the opportunity now to kick on.

“If we can keep ourselves in a good position through the Christmas period, it is a good set up for the rest of the year.

“It’s an opportunity to move on again and we’re training hard to take that on Friday.”

Bath’s discipline came into question last Friday, with Rhys Priestland being sent to the sin bin against his former club.

However, Banahan is not worried about it and believes that if they concentrate on playing their rugby in the right areas of the pitch, the penalty count will address itself.

“The penalty count was high but I think there is a lot more stuff, when we look into it as a squad, that we can help ourselves with,” he added.

“Relieving pressure when we are playing with the ball would help us with that because by not playing in the right areas, we are putting ourselves under pressure.

“There is a lot of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, there is no one area that we can focus on but we can keep moving forward.

“We played quite well for the last two months, you are going to have blips in your run, we probably hoped that we weren’t going to lose a game and playing so poorly but it happened and we can move on as long as we learnt from it.

“We have shown that we are a good group of players with a good character.”