Reputations really don't help; and they become self-fulfilling; and opponents get to take advantage of that.
And I'll agree that we've deserved our reputation for indiscipline over the last few years; but yesterday, we were... averagely disciplined; but punished as if we were worse than that (which leads to frustration, which leads to actual poor discipline in the last 20).
IIRC, yesterday, the penalty count was 5 - 16; with 3 or 4 being a penalties based on Bath's reputation (and "picture", I guess) rather than events, especially at the scrum. Then you're in a match situation where the penalty count, instead of being say 6-8; is 4-10, and the ref's confirmed his bias that one side is cheating, and they get penalised more, or more harshly. You start getting yellow cards without any team warnings. From the players' perspective, you're getting penalised for not cheating; you're seeing knock-ons ignored for a try at one end (I don't mind that one, **** happens; but it affects the players' mentality), and invented to disallow a try at the other. Frustration kicks in, if you're getting penalised anyway, you have to try that extra bit harder, push the boundaries further. You lose a player (when a team without the reputation would get a warning), and the pressure mounts further; and the penalty count mounts further.
To address that mid-match takes a hell of a strong captain (which we don't have) and a hell of a strong leadership group (which we don't really have). To address it longer-term takes sacrifices most fans would be up in arms about.
It's a hell of a cycle to break - as you say, see England.
After England developed a reputation for poor discipline, we went about 18 months of being absolutely spotless, and soft, a full step behind in timing and aggression, often whilst being accused of being filthy, and still being pinged off the park.
Despite all of that yesterday, we had a try wrongly disallowed that would have given us the draw, and an easy conversion (though OB2 forgot his kicking boots). We also had 3 gilt-edged scoring opportunities that we couldn't quite convert. We had enough there to take the officials out of the equation, to win despite the penalty count.
We created 3-4 times as many chances as usual, with a new attacking plan, which looked very, very good - just not the finished product yet. We won the style match, we won the game-plan match, we only lost on the score-board - which yes is ultimately the bit that counts.
I was entertained - which ultimately is the bit that counts for me personally.