Bath and Leicester shared the points for the second time this season on a quagmire of a pitch.

It was Bath who came out of the match the worst, however, with flanker Michael Lipman ruled out for the rest of the season after he broke his leg in the fifth minute.

Lipman, who is out of contract at the end of the campaign and has apparently been attracting the attentions of the Tigers, who are looking for someone to fill Neil Back's shoes, was trapped at the bottom of a melee and was immediately taken to hospital.

The rain had been teeming down all day and in view of the conditions it was no surprise that neither side was able to score a try.

All the points came in the first half, Chris Malone kicking two penalties for the home side while Austin Healey dropped a goal and Andy Goode kicked a penalty out of the mud from all of 50 metres.

It was not the way Martin Johnson might have wished to say farewell to the Recreation Ground, where he made his league debut for Leicester 16 years ago.

With Gloucester falling away from automatic European qualification, Bath's win at Wasps a week previously had revived their hopes of a top-three finish.

But both sides were shorn of their international players and Johnson himself had to pass a fitness test on his back before being cleared to play.

Losing Lipman did not have an obvious effect on Bath's forward effort and from first to last they had the edge, particularly in the scrum where Leicester conceded a string of penalties.

The first scoring opportunity fell to the visitors, however, although Goode's 40-metre penalty fell just under the bar.

Bath used their weight up front to force their way into the Leicester 22 and when Rob Fidler was taken down in the lineout, Malone kicked the penalty from a narrow angle on 24 minutes.

The best move of the game nearly produced a try a couple of minutes later as Henry Tuilagi barged through in midfield, but Leicester were eventually denied the try for a forward pass.

As underfoot conditions worsened in the unrelenting rain, Healey somehow kept his feet to drop a goal on 28 minutes and that was quickly followed by a monster penalty out of the mud by Goode.

The fly-half then had a drop goal effort charged down and when Bath skipper Andy Beattie was obstructed in the kick and chase to the other end of the field, Malone levelled the scores on the stroke of half time.

Leicester had their best spell just after the break when second row Louis Deacon nearly forced his way over but Bath centre Andrew Higgins eventually wriggled away to lift the siege.

Malone was close with a 40m effort just short of the hour and Goode had two drop goal attempts which might have won the game for the league leaders.

But the Bath pack, in which young lock James Hudson was outstanding, won enough ball to ensure that Leicester were unable to build up sufficient pressure to force the winning score.