But the home side pulled away in the second-half thanks to two tries from England wing Chris Ashton and secured the bonus point when Joe Ansbro touched down.

Ben Williams grabbed a late consolation for Bath but Foden was full of praise for the forwards denting Bath’s confidence early on and helping them leapfrog the Somerset side to top the table.

“I think that is probably the most dominate performance I have seen us put in,” Foden said. “We have been working hard and have grown as a squad and have come on leaps and bounds over the last two or three years and now we have laid a big marker down.

“We are confident with our scrum and that is the main thing and Dylan [Hartley] really rallies the troops and prides himself on us being a good scrummaging team.

“It is always a big test when you get to the first scrum but if you can get one over them early on then they get that little bit of doubt in their head and that is exactly what they did.

“And once they were on the back foot we didn’t take a step backward and just kept putting the pressure on and any chance we got to go for the scrum when we were 10m or 15m from the line we went for them.”