WE face a tough task in our bid for the quarter-finals of the European Challenge Cup tomorrow but we are determined to make sure we leave Brive with no regrets.

Our recent record in France gives us reason to believe we can cause another upset and we will be going there with an attacking intent.

We will give Brive the respect that they deserve because they are leading Pool Three with four wins from five while they are going pretty well in the Top 14, but not too much.

We want to have a go at them and repeat the win that we enjoyed at Rodney Parade at the start of the tournament. Last weekend Worcester were only beaten 17-14 by a kick at the death, so victory is achievable for us and would be nothing that we haven’t done before.

Not many fancied us at Stade Francais or Pau in recent years but we didn’t only beat them but we beat them with bonus points.

We will go to Brive with a similar approach. While we want to get the ball into the hands of our dangerous backs we know that we’ve got to produce a big performance up front.

We’ve been going pretty well on that front recently and we have reaping the rewards of hard work on the training ground with our forwards coach Ceri Jones.

I think our scrum, at times our Achilles heel, has been phenomenal since the start of the year. We have got at least parity and often it has been a platform for us.

That’s down to hard work on the scrum machine and live scrummaging, going up against the British and Irish Cup boys is often the toughest session of the week.

As a back row forward I can assure you that it sometimes looks like we are not doing much but it has to be an eight-man effort. The days of being able to just lean on and rest are long gone, we all have to push like hell to help out the tight five boys.

If you have a bad day at the office – like we did at Worcester – then the domino effect means fatigue sets in for both tight five forwards and back row because you can’t get a foothold.

But we are getting there at the scrum to build a real platform yet we still strive to improve, getting it to be a weapon like our lineout currently is.

I’m told that our defensive lineout is the third best in the Guinness PRO12 and that’s down to hard work in the week.

Me and Ed Jackson are in charge of the defensive lineout while Cory Hill and Rynard Landman do the attacking lineout while plenty of credit must go to our analyst Owen Griffiths, who is Ceri’s right-hand man.

Owen has a real eye for detail and leaves no stone unturned in helping us prepare to put all the homework into practice out in the middle.

Hopefully our set piece will produce the goods this weekend and help us to make the quarters for the third year on the bounce.

We head to Brive today via Heathrow and Toulouse and the travel is always worth it to play in front of passionate French fans.

I was devastated to miss the Castres and Pau games last year so I am pleased to be back in the mix after sitting out the game with Enisei-STM with a few niggles.

The experience of playing at Perpignan, Bordeaux, Stade Francis, Toulouse are up there with my career highlights and it will be great to add Brive to the list… especially if it’s a winning trip.