BATH scrum-half Chris Cook has warned that his teammates can’t rise to the emotion of the game as they prepare to face Leinster at the Rec.

Tomorrow’s opponents head into game with a point to prove having suffered their heaviest European home defeat in their Champions Cup opener with Wasps.

The three-time European champions fell to a 33-6 loss in Dublin but Cook knows the scale of the challenge awaiting his side, having been knocked out by the Irish side at the quarter-finals stage last season and been part of the side that were humiliated 52-27 in 2011.

“Leinster is always going to be a tough game, we found that out last year and a couple of years before that as well,” he told the Wiltshire Times.

“With their loss to Wasps at the weekend we will be expecting them to have had a tough week this week and to come out firing down at the Rec.

“I don’t think we change a thing. It is just another game and we prepare like it is any other game.

“There might be a bit more emotion in it so I guess you just have to be disciplined enough to treat it as another game and not rise to that emotional level.

“At the same time we lost both out opening games in Europe last year and still qualified for the knock-out stages.

“These games are what you dream of playing when you are a kid.

“I remember watching all these games when I was at boarding school with my housemates and it is mental to think that I am now involved in them.

“Some of the boys in my boarding house will be watching me play and it is a pretty cool feeling and what I have always wanted to do.”