IT will be without doubt a tough test at Saracens on Sunday — I watched them beat Ulster in the Heineken Cup quarter-final on Saturday night and they looked great.

They will now have one eye on their Heineken Cup semi-final with Toulon at Twickenham later this month, but they are finishing the season very well.

They have a great squad and they play a good style of rugby.

Obviously, we will be playing on their new artificial pitch at Allianz Park this weekend, so we have been doing plenty of training in our indoor centre on the rubber-crumb surface to get used to it.

We have also done a few sessions on the University of Worcester’s artificial pitch and we will be using that again later this week for the team run.

It is a much quicker game on that surface and it will be a new experience for us. I know a few of the Sarries lads — such as Richard Wigglesworth — and they are massive fans of it.

The scrums stay up more on it too, so it proves that props can still scrummage after all! Our scrum has been improving recently and we will look to keep doing what we have been doing so far.

Nigel Redman and Phil Vickery have had a big input this season and I spoke with Nigel last week as he has been bringing in a few new techniques for us to work on.

I’m not too long in the tooth to learn and we have looked at a few things in the scrum, such as body angles and we are always looking at new ideas. We also had Phil Larder with us for a couple of days last week and we had some really good sessions.

The lads then had some time off from Friday until yesterday, so the boys are pretty fresh and looking sharp ahead of our trip to Saracens.

Sarries are a dynamic side and, although we will almost certainly field a heavier pack than them, they are still effective and they have a very light back five and will look to play the game quickly.

We will just go there and look to try and get this away win monkey off our back, even though it will be one of the toughest places to go and win in the division. Our squad is looking really exciting for next season and we will be looking to start full of confidence and put right the wrongs of this season.

If we can turn the games we have been losing in the last few minutes into wins, as well as having a bit more luck with referee errors, then we will be in a much better position. We just need to finish off the rest of this season strongly now.

I was watching Toulon against Leicester on Sunday and the Heineken Cup is where you want to be as a player. I’ve had a few quarter-finals in my career — it is an outstanding competition.