The Premiership record Bath just set in win over Newcastle

Bath set a new club record for tries in a regular Premiership season in Saturday’s 55-19 bonus-point win over 14-man Newcastle, which guarantees them top spot and a home semi-final in the play-offs.

The runaway Gallagher Premiership leaders went into the top-versus-bottom clash needing seven tries to create history, having scored 75 in the first 14 rounds of the season, and they achieved the feat an hour in when Austin Emens crossed for his second of the match.

The existing club record of 81 tries from the 26-game 1998/99 season has been beaten in 11 games fewer by a rampant team with so many weapons in its attacking arsenal.

Bath can hurt teams out wide, through the middle or from close quarters through pick-and-goes, and they still have a slim chance of becoming the first team to reach three figures for tries scored in a single Premiership season. Northampton are the current record league holders with 99 tries from the 2021/22 campaign.

Johann van Graan’s side have three regular-season games remaining, all on Saturdays, against play-off chasing teams. They head to Wales first, on May 10, to take on Bristol for the showcase game at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff. A week later, old rivals Leicester visit The Rec, before Bath conclude their campaign away to Saracens, on May 31st.

In the only other Premiership season in which Bath have finished top of the table before, under John ‘Knuckles’ Connolly in 2003/04, they barely managed to cross the line twice a game, while two years before that, they failed to average one try a game, such was the paucity of their attacking ambition.

Under van Graan, though, Bath have never failed to score less than 70 tries in a season, with this year topping the lot. No fewer than 32 players have contributed to the overall total of 83 tries.

Bath’s season-by-season Premiership try-scoring record

*try stats supplied by Stuart Farmer