Stuart Hooper, Bath's match-winner in Newport, is relishing the prospect of Sunday's Heineken Cup Pool Five top-of-the-table game with Toulouse at the Recreation Ground, writes Matt Cain.

Steve Meehan's side lead the French club after Toulouse were beaten 33-26 at home by Glasgow and Bath won 15-12 at Newport Gwent Dragons.

Second row Hooper, who joined the club from relegated Leeds last summer, can see a place in the quarter-finals on the horizon.

"Facing Toulouse at the Rec is going to be awesome. It is an occasion, as a player, you don't want to miss," he said.

"I cannot wait for the match. We knew we had this game against the Dragons to play and we gave them every bit of respect we could.

"We have big ambitions in the Heineken Cup but you cannot look past Toulouse.

"We are at the Rec but they probably thought they would be fine at home against Glasgow.

"It is an awesome competition and every team you play against in the Heineken Cup deserves to be there. It is going to be a huge challenge against Toulouse."

Bath made hard work of seeing off a determined Dragons outfit that had pushed the Guinness Premiership side all the way earlier this season. The visitors went ahead through a Joe Maddock try and a Butch James penalty but then lost Hooper and No 8 Daniel Browne to the sin bin within minutes of each other.

And tries from Richard Fussell and Wayne Evans, plus a James Alridge conversion, put Bath 12-8 behind before Hooper struck with 13 minutes to go.

"We gave away a lot of penalties and had a couple of sin-binnings. We will look at that for next week for sure," reflected the lock.

"Every time you get a yellow card, you have got to make it up when you come back on.

"It was a really tough game. The Dragons are a good side.

"They've proved that when they played at our place and in their previous games in the Magners League.

"They are a really physical forward pack, they've got guys who are good over the ball when it's on the floor, their line-out works well and they tested us in the scrum.