Bath’s 71–48 loss at Northampton is impossible to ignore: scoring freely did not compensate for repeated defensive concessions. Spencer’s return beside Russell improves the selected control options, with Obano, Dunn and Stuart starting up front. The home lean is provisional because Montpellier’s full match-day side has not been verified in this packet.

Montpellier have beaten Perpignan 50–13 and Toulon 28–0 at home, then lost 22–30 in Paris. Those contrasting results do not establish a clean cross-league form edge. The last retrieved European meeting was Montpellier’s 19–10 win here in 2021; it is too old to carry a meaningful current H2H score. Scorecard net +2; raw house home probability 69.1%, raw home margin 4.70. The 1–10-point band is an editorial range, not a statistical confidence interval. Combined-total prior from 10 distinct completed matches in the two explicit form windows, 2026-06-06 to 2026-10-10: median 52.5 points. The projected 53 adjusts only for integer score parity with the rounded 5-point margin. Cross-competition and selection changes limit transfer; no unsupported weather adjustment.