Cardiff Blues’ season has been building up towards the big occasions such as Friday’s European Challenge Cup knockout clash against London Irish, according to director of rugby Dai Young.
The Cardiff Arms Park outfit travel to Brentford Community Stadium on Friday to kick off a highly-anticipated weekend of European rugby, aiming to book a place in the quarter final the following week.
The match is the first of a quartet of Anglo-Welsh encounters this weekend, with Scarlets, Ospreys and Dragons set to take on Sale Sharks, Newcastle Falcons and Northampton Saints respectively.
Young is licking his lips ahead of Friday’s ‘must-win’ clash and expects a thrilling encounter at Irish’s new stadium.
“I’m looking forward to it. It will be nice to play in a different competition and I’ve been impressed with London Irish in some of the games they’ve played lately,” said the former Cardiff, Wales and Lions prop.
“They’ve got a lot of international players in there with a lot of caps and a lot of big players so it will be good to measure ourselves up against them.
“You work hard all season to get into a position where you’re still playing at the business-end of the season. Because of Covid, things have been a little bit different around why we are where we are at the minute, but it’s certainly a must-win game. We’ll get one opportunity at this and we have to get it right.
“It’s a good opportunity to have that sort of mindset going into a game, because it’s not something we’ve had a lot of over the last couple of seasons.
“I worked with Brad Davies at Wasps, and he was Ospreys for a while, and they’ll have put a lot of work into their defence.
“They’ll have a front-loaded defensive line, will look to win collisions with two-up tackles and get over the ball.
“So we know in attack that we’ll have to get some penetration, and if we don’t get that they’ll turn us over.
“We’ll have to look to turn them and get the ball behind them because otherwise you’ll be playing the game going backwards.
“We don’t know how they’ll address this and what team they’ll pick, but they’ve certainly got stand-out international players up front and, with Paddy Jackson at 10, they seem to want to run it from everywhere.
“They’re an exciting team to play against, and that’s born out of when you do the analysis on them. You’re talking about a team that’s comfortable to play from any area of the field. It will be a real good test for us.
“I spent five or six seasons in Acton when I was with Wasps, and the new stadium is just down the road from there.
“I’ve seen the building going up so it will be nice to go and play there.
“It looks great from the television shots and I know the boys are excited to play in a new stadium and against a team that they don’t play against on a regular basis.
“They’re always big games against English opposition. I spent a lot of time in the Premiership, and I’m a big fan of the Premiership but also know how tough it is in there.
“I know how good those teams are and it will be good for all of us to be measured there.
“But I’ve been impressed with all of the Welsh sides. We’re all showing that we’re improving, although everyone would like us to improve at a faster rate, but it’s there to see that we’re all improving.
“It would be good for all of us to go into this weekend, put a good accounts of ourselves and get some results against our friends from across the border.”
Cardiff Blues are on the hunt for a third European trophy, following successes in 2010 and 2018.
And, with the squad’s international contingent returning on the back of Guinness Six Nations success, Young is happy to have plenty of selection headaches ahead of the trip to London.
The director of rugby added: “I enjoy them. They’re the headaches that you want and at the end of the day there are some really tight calls, as you can imagine.
“You only have to look at our prop scenario, where we have two guys that have been away in the Welsh camp and two guys that have stayed here and done really well.
“There’s some tight calls in there, as there is in the back row and second row. That’s what you want.
“If we want to be the team that we want to be, we need selection headaches right across the board. I’ve always been strong in my belief that I want two quality players in each position. That makes my job so much easier.
“You’ll have ebbs and flows throughout the season when one of them pushes a little bit higher than the other, but that will change.
“But that’s what we want. It’s very much a 23-man game and the bench will play a big determining factor in whether you win these games or not.
“The strength on the bench can be the difference between winning or losing. We’ve been excited to get these players back and have these headaches.”