Defeat hard to take for Meehan

The 1998 Heineken Cup winners led until the final minute when Julien Dupy's 45-metre penalty stole a 29-27 victory for the visitors.

A 76th minute try from Ollie Phillips had given Stade hope after Bath looked to have secured the points before Dupy's late, late intervention.

And the fact that Bath performed so well for large parts of the match, scoring tries from Nicky Little and Matt Carraro and producing some fine attacking rugby, meant defeat was even harder to swallow.

"That was pretty hard to take," said Meehan, who ironically joined Bath from Stade in 2004.

"The way we saw it we played some really good rugby in that first half. We'd set out this week to come out of the doldrums because we felt we hadn't really been true to ourselves.

"We had the organisation in place and we used the width well. We caused them some problems and went into the half-time break with a well-deserved lead.

"After that I suppose it could be said we played a little bit too much but I won't be too hard on the players over that because we've been trying to get away from being unexpressive.

"The guys worked hard and unfortunately were penalised a few times too often and Stade took their try in typical fashion. Obviously it's disappointing but we should be happy with the way we went about things; we've just got to take our opportunities and finish games off."

The loss leaves Bath marooned at the bottom of Pool 4 with just a single point from their opening two matches and Meehan admits qualification would now require an heroic effort, and plenty of good fortune.

"We're going to have to play very well in our remaining four games and probably some results are going to have to go our way.

"We played a far better brand of rugby than we did last week and we've turned that around in a week and we will continue to try to develop this.

"We go back into the Premiership now with two home games to come. With hard work and application, we can win those games and be up and running again."