While the coaches at Bath did me a favour running me off the bench for a season or so, I found it hugely frustrating then and would find it frustrating now. In the space of a few months, he has survived a scrummaging war with Leicester - no one's idea of a quiet afternoon by the babbling brook - and pulverised a Wasps front row featuring a 59-cap All Black in Craig Dowd. He is now a first-choice prop at club level, and is confidently expected to nail down an England starting position over the next six months."I think it would be wrong of me to suggest that my time has come," he said. "But is he tough enough? Does he have the nerve?" Although Stevens played 12 minutes of that match off the bench, thereby winning his first cap, and another 10 in Auckland the following week before retiring with a leg injury, he struggled to get involved on either occasion and Chilcott's questions remained unanswered.

That would be some achievement, given his apparent difficulties in New Zealand last summer.Shortly before the first meeting with the silver-ferned brigade at rickety old Carisbrook, that hell-hole of a venue in downtown Dunedin, the aforementioned Chilcott saw his successor in the Bath and England front rows looking "as white as a sheet". This rather worried the great West Country rabble-rouser, an old-school prop who did not believe in showing signs of terminal petrification prior to a match."He's a good player, this Stevens," he said. If we're able to draw something from the support, all well and good. But ultimately, we want to set our own standards."When it comes to standards, the explosive and unusually flexible 22-year-old prop - loose-head, tight-head, any head you like - is raising the bar almost by the week. Having announced himself to the Recreation Ground regulars by depositing Abdel Benazzi, one of the more imposing figures in world rugby, in a shallow grave during an appearance off the bench against Saracens in the spring of 2003, he has sharpened every aspect of his game since, to the extent that at least one of this summer's Lions coaches can see him playing all three Tests against the All Blacks. And if the shores of the Indian Ocean are a world away from the banks of the River Avon, he is as sensitive to the longings of the Bath faithful as Matt Perry, Lee Mears or Duncan Bell, all of whom have roots in the area.

Nevertheless, he does not buy the argument that Bath will be motivated by the deeds of yore when they take on Leeds this afternoon."We're all aware that we have a huge responsibility to the supporters," he said. "People like Mike Catt and John Mallett, who were a part of the squad during the glory days, were still in the side when I first arrived at Bath, and by listening to them and playing alongside them, I got an idea of the strength of the cup tradition here And of course, I cherish that tradition. But this is a very different group of players from the old team and we feel we have a responsibility to ourselves, as well as to those who follow us. Rightly or wrongly, the man in the street - or rather, the man in the Georgian crescent - considers the trophy to be his personal property, and while the tournament is now very much the third of three behind the Heineken Cup and the Zurich Premiership, the locals crave this particular piece of silverware as an Athenian might crave the Elgin Marbles.Stevens knows all about the interweaving of pride and passion in his chosen sport, having been raised in one of the great citadels of the Springbok game and represented the country of his birth at Schools, Under-19 and Under-21 levels.

After all, the Powergen Cup final was only 72 hours distant.If selection for the Lions, an honour Stevens secured for himself on Monday when Sir Clive Woodward named his squad for the forthcoming tour of New Zealand, is the nearest thing the game in the British Isles has to a holy grail, the domestic knock-out cup is the cross all Bath players must bear. The West Countrymen triumphed at Twickenham on no fewer than 10 occasions between 1984 and 1996, and to this day they have never lost a final. Matt Stevens was a mere 14-year-old, albeit an abnormally large 14-year-old, when the British and Irish Lions last won a Test series, back in 1997. In fact, he was present in person, wedged into a seat - two seats, in all probability - at King's Park in his native Durban, as Jeremy Guscott dropped the goal that brought the Springboks to their knees and sent a nation of rugby obsessives scurrying towards the clifftops like a colony of lemmings in mourning. Eight years on, the South African has become an Englishman earning a handsome living at Guscott's old club and about to embark on a Lions adventure of his own A tale of the unexpected? Roald Dahl, eat your heart out. A tale of the unexpected? Roald Dahl, eat your heart out. "Do I pinch myself when I think about the way things have turned out? Of course I do," he said this week as he forced his substantial front-rower's frame into an armchair in the public bar of the Recreation Ground in Bath. Replacements: M Holt, R Rawlinson, J Dunbar, D Hyde, M McMillan, C McMullen, D Albanese.Bath: M Perry; J Maddock, A Higgins, O Barkley, F Welsh; C Malone, N Walshe; M Stevens, L Mears, D Bell, S Borthwick (capt), D Grewcock, G Lewis, J Scaysbrook, I Fea'unati.