Bath fought their way to an 11th successive victory in all competitions, but despite their best run for a decade they decided last week that all that glittered was not Gary Gold by parting company with the director of rugby halfway through his contract for reasons that were cryptically explained.

His departure seems more to do with a reorganisation behind the scenes, where the club's owner, Bruce Craig, has taken a greater involvement after moving back to England from France, than a power struggle, but Bath are better equipped to challenge for the title than they were when the South African Gold joined two summers ago. Despite starting the day in third position, they are not widely perceived as contenders: in previous years promise has preceded a fall, but as they took the game to Harlequins from the outset, belief seems to have percolated through one of the tournament's more fickle sides.

Harlequins were on a run of six consecutive league and European victories, which made a shapeless first half all the more disappointing. Two early George Ford penalties gave Bath a six-point cushion, but despite the attacking intent of both sides, there was little flow and the game suffered a slow strangulation by penalties with the scrum, in particular, vexing the referee.

Ford, who is the most likely beneficiary of Toby Flood's decision to move to France next season and effectively take himself out of England's thoughts, played the territory game well, stretching Mike Brown with some raking kicks and giving the full-back few opportunities to counterattack or take the aerial route.

Quins continued their recent ploy of having two openside flankers in harness, Chris Robshaw and Luke Wallace, playing left and right, but with little width or pace to the game it became another collision contest and Bath were the more abrasive. When Ford extended Bath's lead to nine points after he had been tackled late and crudely by the second-row George Robson, Quins had barely been seen as an attacking force.

Tim Molenaar's failure to pass to Matt Hopper inside Bath's 22 and losing the ball in contact ended their one move of note in the opening period. Bath did not have many more: Kyle Eastmond's chip to the line for Horacio Agulla confounded Brown but the Argentina wing knocked on.

It was the story of the afternoon. When Quins stirred themselves in the final eight minutes, staring not just at defeat but one without a bonus point, Molenaar against lost control of the ball with the line beckoning after a neat inside pass by Nick Evans. When Tom Guest was denied after a driving maul by the television match official and Bath made a mess of the scrum that was awarded instead of a try, Quins were condemned to a pointless afternoon. Their defence had been undone six minutes into the second half after Bath won a lineout on the Quins' 10-metre line, although the throw to Stuart Hooper did not look straight. The ball was quickly moved to the midfield where the defence, a man light with the wing Charlie Walker deposited in the sin bin shortly before the interval for an early and dangerous tackle on Anthony Watson, focused on Eastmond.

The inside centre was used as a decoy with his midfield partner, Jonathan Joseph, another England Six Nations aspirant, the target. He ran on to the ball at pace and by the time he reached the 22 where Brown was lying in wait, he had generated enough momentum to swerve away from the full-back for a try that was out of keeping with the overall tone of the match.

When Bath tried a variation of the move six minutes later, Agulla dropped the ball as a gap beckoned, an act that was far more in keeping with the character of an afternoon that, despite the endeavour, saw two broadly matched teams blot out each other's attacking threat.

Bath's scrum laid the foundation for a victory that would have been greater had Ford not missed his last four penalty attempts. The fly-half was able to control the game in a way that his opposite number Nick Evans was not, yet it was a match, before Gold, that Bath had the capacity to lose, wasting opportunities and then self-destructing in defence.

For all their attacking ability behind, they have a vein of South African pragmatism now. As ugly victories go, this would get a part as one of the sisters in Cinderella, but a club that has never won the Premiership in the play-off era has stealthily consolidated its place in the top four. The recent order is being challenged.