Tigers had scored 32 tries in the opening seven matches of the season, but had to rely on six penalties and a drop goal from Toby Flood to overcome their traditional rivals in the sixth round of the Aviva Premiership Rugby season.
“It’s a good win,” said director of rugby Cockerill. “It wasn’t a pretty win but the weather played a big part in that. Both sides suffered with the downpour in the first half, which was frustrating.
“We’ve been scoring a lot of tries and winning games with some big scores, but this was a different day and we had to dig in, keep our composure in different conditions and take the points when the opportunities came.
“We did that and we also defended very well.
“We had been conceding too many soft tries but we’ve been working on our defence and we did that very well when we had to this afternoon. We fought really hard on the ball and it was our defence that stood firm at the end when they were building some pressure in our half.”
The downpour made handling a lottery at times in the first half and put ball control at a premium.
“We tried to play, at times we almost tried too much,” said Cockerill.
“The mindset is that we want to play so you can’t complain too much. Bath defended well and there weren’t many opportunities. When the opportunities came, we spilled ball or we coughed up ball, which happens in the wet.
“But at 12 points up we should have controlled the game a bit better.”
The one piece of bad news for Tigers on the 130th anniversary of the club’s first-ever fixture was an injury to prop Boris Stankovich who left the field early in the first half.
“He’s having it assessed but he could have suffered damage to his eye socket,” said Cockerill. “It’s a shame because Boris has been playing exceptionally well.”
