Bath, once the pre-eminent club in English rugby, go into today's Heineken European Cup final against the holders Brive in a state of nervous apprehension that would have been unthinkable 18 months ago when they were basking in the prestige of their latest domestic league and Cup double.
Since those innocent days Bath have won nothing and on current form their prospects of returning home wearing the European crown are so fragile as to be virtually negligible. Andy Robinson, like any ambitious coach, has been quietly talking up the Bath challenge, promising plenty of "strength, pace and organisation" but the former Bath and England flanker knows their game plan is in danger of being shredded by Brive.
Dreadnought defence, which used to be the mainstay of Bath's armoury against quality sides, has become a moveable feast, as Richmond demonstrated a week ago by dumping the 10 times winners out of the Tetleys Cup.
However, the reasons why Brive may pile up the points in rapid order go far deeper than the simple tactical shortcomings which Robinson and his fellow coaches have been addressing in meticulous detail this past week.
Lack of leadership on the field for instance has been a persistent flaw in games that obstinately refuse to go Bath's way: the larger than life personalities such as Stuart Barnes, John Hall, Gareth Chilcott and Robinson himself who each used to take charge with dominating results, are no longer there.
Clearly Bath have been doing something right to reach the final at the second attempt - they did after all beat Brive 27-25 and Pau at the Recreation Ground - yet it was evident in some of their pool games, at Pontypridd for example, that they were living on a wing (Matt Perry actually) and a prayer.
A worrying lack of conviction in putting down middle rank sides such as Sale and London Scottish stems from their loss of authority among the forwards who rarely hunt as a pack and when they do tend to give away penalties with naive abandon.
Long time Bath supporters - of whom 6,000 are expected to be in the 38,000 crowd at the Stade Lescure - complain that commercialism has all but destroyed the soul of their once great club, spreading its cold tentacles into the dressing room where rugby players have been replaced by a new species of rugby worker.
Professionalism has been the hallmark of Bath since the early 1980s when Jack Rowell took control but nowadays it has come to mean video analysis, flow charts and a high fibre diet instead of a competitive state of mind brimful of passion and self-belief.
Passion in fact has been the key to Brive's seemingly unstoppable progress through Europe in the past two seasons. The comfortable English notion that the French invariably make poor travellers was dispelled in glorious style when Brive blew away Leicester in last year's final in Cardiff.
Robinson believes Brive have altered their playing style within the past three months. But the fact remains that the Brive line-up abounds in proven match winners: the out-half Alain Penaud, the centre/goal kicker Christophe Lamaison, and the full-back Sebastian Viars all have the capacity to prosper on morsels of possession from any source.
In contrast Bath have caught the habit of blowing hot and cold on major occasions, often relying on their goalkicker Jonathan Callard - notably absent from the Richmond debacle - to get them out of trouble.
The intriguing question though is whether Bath can live with the accelerating tempo imposed by Brive whose ball handling forwards combine seamlessly with their versatile backs, insistently finding the wide open spaces through which they run in long range tries.
Yesterday, Laurent Seigne, the Brive coach and former Test prop, was swift to dismiss the suggestion that last year's ear-biting incident might have soured his view of the Bath forwards. Seigne remains confident his players will give Bath due respect for genuine sporting reasons.
Nevertheless there is no doubt that Bath's competitive focus, not to mention their sense of amour propre, has been disorientated by the torrent of negative feedback that followed the biting affair.
Further repercussions could be felt today in front of a TV auience estimated at more than 50 millions: the Bath front row will have to be on their best behaviour, whereas their Brive counterparts may be tempted to test their opponents' patience beyond the limits of legality.
Referee Jim Fleming will earn his match expenses.
