"I thought we got a particular good start but failed to turn that pressure into points," commented Co-coach Brian Smith, left holding the 'Bath baby' after fellow coach Michael Foley went back home to his wife who has just given birth to a boy.

"From that point on our mistake rate was very high," continued Smith, quite happy to talk frankly about yet another reversal.

"I think that we were a little bit naive and failed to pay enough respect to the conditions, and individual handling errors let us down. If you were making an analogy to a tennis match we had too many unforced errors."

Undoubtedly the sin-binning of Bath prop Simon Emms proved decisive, but with Barkley landing two early penalties after the break, the visitors were still in with a chance until a flurry of penalties saw NEC Harlequins ease home.

"We knew that the game could quite possibly be determined by penalties," continued Smith, "I think on penalties you can argue the toss either way. Harlequins had a yellow card dished out pretty quickly as well, but the key thing for it was that we knew that we had to have better field position."

"It's our fault for being in the wrong position in the first place, and letting Quins off the hook when we were hot on the attack or turning over ball when we were inside our own half which we did do far too often."

The loss of their playmaker Mike Catt shortly before the kick-off was another severe blow to Bath, who had shown some signs of improvement as their more senior players returned to first team action.

"I was particularly pleased by our halves and whilst Chris Malone is no Mike Catt, I thought he tried to give the side a bit of direction," said Smith.

"Losing Catty before kick-off - we had a fitness test this morning - was a little bit of a disruption, but certainly not an excuse, although any side that can field Mike Catt into the side will be a better team for it."

"But in saying that the conditions today were not for an expansive game, where you can throw long cut out balls. It was more for your bread and butter rugby and unfortunately we failed that test."

Smith was not too disheartened with his side's performance overall, but suggested that a number of players just 'didn't turn-up.'

"I thought that the battle of the forward packs was a good battle there today. To give Harlequins their dues they capitalised of some naive ruck defence off the driving maul, which was pretty much how their second try was scored."

"They just got weight of numbers there and drove very well and tied in all our forwards and then they were able to tie in our inside backs as well and release Moore to the far corner."

"I thought that we created enough chances today. We had balls bouncing off people's chins or bouncing off their chests when we had the line wide open, particularly in the far corner in the first half we butchered some great scoring opportunities."

"I still think that we are moving people around and we are finding holes, my biggest gripe is that it wasn't a professional enough display, and individuals let us down with individual unforced errors and it is not good enough at this level. "

"That's one of the areas that we are most disappointed with, and that was just an unforced error. We are calling on 22 players to turn-up every Saturday and play well and by and large they have done that this season although the results have not been there, but the performance has been good but I would say that we had too many individuals who did not turn-up and put in a professional effort."