Bath 38-26 Gloucester: Will Muir takes to the air to put the holders into semis

Bath …………………… 38pts

Tries: Carr-Smith 15, 46; Tuipulotu 20, Muir 33, Staddon 56, Ojomoh 59 Conversions: De Glanville 16, 34, 46, 56

Gloucester ……….. 26pts

Tries: Redshaw 30, Thorley 49, M Knight 52, Gwynne 77 Conversions: C Atkinson 31, 50; Barton 77

Seb Atkinson passed his Six Nations audition, but it was holders Bath who marched into the semi-finals of the Prem Cup from Pool A with victory over Gloucester.

Bath scored six tries, with wing Will Muir dominating the aerial battle and Max Ojomoh pulling the strings from 10, and they now face a trip to Leicester Tigers next weekend in the last four.

Gloucester centre Atkinson was sent back to his club from England camp in midweek to get some minutes and got 50 of them before being hauled off on orders from Steve Borthwick.

Atkinson had some decent touches and made some dents in the Bath midfield, and after a successful summer tour to Argentina, is a live contender to face Italy in Rome on Saturday.

Calming influence

The 23-year-old would have added to his two caps in November but for a knee injury, but did enough here to tee up a Six Nations debut.

Gloucester assistant coach Trevor Woodman explained: “England are in charge of that playing programme and they wanted him to get some rugby before the Italy game and he was capped at 50 minutes.

“It is either 50 minutes or nothing, so you take the 50 minutes.

“He has got such a level head on his shoulders, and he adds so much to our back line, even though he is still young himself.

“He adds a lot of intent, and he is [a] calming influence around some of those young boys that are out there.”

Gloucester could have done with a few more minutes from Atkinson as Bath won comfortably despite the visitors grabbing a try bonus point late on.

Wing Muir said: “Last year it was the first trophy we had won for 16 years, so it means a lot to us.

“This was basically a quarter-final and we knew Gloucester would basically throw everything at us.”

Match action

Bath led 19-7 at the break thanks to tries from scrum-half Tom Carr-Smith, Tuipulotu and wing Muir, but they did not have it all their own way.

Gloucester had the lion’s share of the ball in the first quarter and could have scored twice, once when lock Arthur Clark thought he had got the ball down and the second when Seb Atkinson laid the ball back and Clark made a mess of it.

They were made to pay for those errors when Bath hit them with a sucker punch on 15 minutes when centre Will Butt cut open the Gloucester defence and fed Carr-Smith to score under the sticks.

Then Tuipulotu burrowed over from a driving line out before the visitors finally got on the board, thanks to full-back Ben Redshaw going over off Charlie Atkinson’s flat ball.

Bath’s third came when Carr-Smith’s long pass was deliberately left by Tom de Glanville, before Muir picked it brilliantly on the bounce to score in the corner.

The bonus point score, which meant Gloucester had to win to get through, came five minutes after the break when Carr-Smith snaffled a second.

It was all over bar the shouting at 38-19 when Ojomoh scored with a superb finish in the left-hand corner and Deian Gwynne’s late score was too little, too late.