London Irish may be slipping ever closer towards the relegation zone, but their capacity to surprise is undiminished as Bath discovered when they were on the wrong end of a red hot candidate for try of the season.
With 64 minutes gone, Irish were under the cosh, 23-9 down and being squeezed into something close to submission when their wing Marland Yarde took a quick throw, the fly-half Ian Humphreys dummied a clearance kick, the replacement scrum-half Jack Moates returned the ball to Yarde and ten seconds later the wing was at the other end of the ground.
Humphreys cruised up outside, slipped the ball to Moates and Irish were back within touching distance. With Sale, London Welsh and Worcester still to be played at home, the bonus point would also have been handy, but it was not to be. Bath stormed back, their forwards gaining almost total control while bundling over first Nathan Catt and then Anthony Perenise, both replacement props.
With London Welsh, currently one point above Irish, meeting Sale, who are five adrift, at Oxford on Sunday afternoon, it will be a nail-biting 24 hours for the director of rugby Brian Smith, whose side played for 30 minutes with 14 players, conceded 23 penalties – Smith's figure – and a penalty try.
The Australian, who used to coach the England backs, said: "I've been around the game a long time and there are things that you don't see every day – that try and a penalty count like that. David [the referee David Rose ] obviously saw things very different from us."
What with the links between the two coaching teams and Bath's reported attempts to buy two of the Exiles' prospects, the game was bound to have a bit of crackle to it. Admittedly there were Irish hugs or handshakes before the game for the likes of first-team coach Toby Booth and Neal Hatley, who now looks after the Bath forwards, but whether relations will be quite so close if the England centre Jonathan Joseph and the fast-rising full-back, the 21-year-old Anthony Watson, swap shirts in the summer is another matter.
For now though, Smith's focus is Premiership survival whereas Gary Gold, five straight wins in all competitions behind him, sees brighter things on the horizon for his Bath – possibly even a top six finish, despite their slow start to the season. However, for the next four, possibly six weeks, they may be without their New Zealand fly-half Stephen Donald.
Not that it mattered here. He landed just the one penalty before damaging a rib and it was the arrival of the replacement Tom Heathcote that added tempo to the Bath performance. Before then it was the more accurate boot of Tom Homer that broke the ice and then added a second penalty after an attractive break by Guy Armitage, the one brother who seems determined to stay at Sunbury.
But with Donald gone, Heathcote and the inside centre Kyle Eastmond got Bath out of second gear and over the try line twice in five minutes.
First Heathcote, a member of Scotland's Six Nations squad, and Matt Banahan, no longer wanted by England, put Irish on the back foot and when the ball came back, right to left, it was Heathcote who looked to have put Tom Biggs over in the left corner. Instead Topsy Ojo performed his second high tackle on the Bath wing within three minutes and Mr Rose signalled a penalty try while pointing Ojo to the sin-bin.
Five minutes later Heathcote was pivotal again, acting as the middle man in an orthodox move that started with Peter Stringer scuttling from the back of a lineout and ended with the replacement fly-half putting Nick Abendanon over in the corner. After a sluggish start, Bath had rattled up a 14 points for an 11-point lead, which Homer trimmed to eight points on half time.
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