Last Sunday will have left a lot of Saracens fans feeling quite deflated.

For the second year in a row, our European hopes and dreams had been suffocated by one of the French giants. Any improvements from our account last season against Clermont were difficult to discern, and ultimately felt hollow.

Lions selection brought excellent and well-deserved news for Owen Farrell, Mako Vunipola and (surprisingly) Matt Stevens. However, weighed against this was the tough call to leave out Brad Barritt, and the frankly scandalous omission of Kelly Brown.

But Barritt and Brown, and the rest of the Sarries team of which those two are such important cogs, will be judged on how they respond to their respective disappointments.

For the first two - whilst not wishing injury on anyone - this will hopefully mean the chance to prove their worth to Warren Gatland later in the tour.

For all of them, it means bouncing back from the Toulon defeat and reigniting their assault on the Premiership trophy.

With Bath, we will encounter a good-quality and highly physical group of players, who finally showed their collective ability with a rampant performance against Tigers at the Rec. They were explosive at the scrum and at the breakdown, and dangerous in the wide channels.

They will come to Allianz Park buoyed by their last outing, and ready to fight tooth and nail for sixth place and a Heineken Cup spot.

The following week, again in Barnet, sees us host a Premiership semi-final - so there will be no let up in intensity.

Sarries have lost two (admittedly very tough) matches on the bounce now. After a good-but-not-great first half of the season, the last few months have been so exciting, and have promised so much, that to miss out on all silverware would seem like a missed opportunity. Which shows how far our standards have changed in recent times!

This group's season will now be defined by its resolve, its strength of character to recover. In general we are quite philosophical in defeat, and we are aware that a return to our usual standards will bring a return to winning ways.

No disrespect intended, but at our best, on the new pitch, we have the ability to cream Bath on Saturday - to batter them through the middle; to run rings around them on the outside; to out-work and out-think them. But it could quite easily not happen, especially if there's a hangover from Toulon.

To me, Ali Hargreaves and Brad Barritt could use a rest, and there are big concerns injury-wise over Ernst Joubert.

But otherwise, let us unleash all the bottled-up disappointment of last week, hit our straps in the Premiership again, and march on to the knockout games and another shot at a trophy.