WE head into tomorrow’s Greene King IPA Championship play-off semi-final second leg against London Scottish at Sixways with a narrow five-point advantage.

Scottish finished third in the league table because they are a very good side and we are under no illusions about how tough the second leg is going to be.

Scottish have the top try-scorer in the Championship in their captain Mark Bright and possess a very strong driving maul, which they use to their advantage.

Our supporters have been fantastic throughout the Championship campaign and all the players, including me, are hoping a big crowd will get behind us from the opening whistle and give us their encouragement.

We are not taking anything for granted — we are certainly not getting ahead of ourselves — and a large crowd at Sixways can make all the difference.

We have only just passed the half-way point in the semi-final tie and we are fully focussed on trying to win the second leg to progress to the next stage.

It has been a very quick turnaround this week and, I did see Bristol had beaten Rotherham Titans in their first leg tie, but that has remained far from my thoughts.

The first leg at Richmond was a tough game and I thought we showed tremendous character to regain the lead in stoppage-time.

We were pleased with our start and defended multi-phases during the latter stages of the first-half and were delighted not to concede a point in that period.

At the end of the first-half, we were reduced to 14 men when Jonny Arr was yellow-carded and that incident spurred on Scottish. I have watched the yellow card incident involving Jonny a few times in slow-motion television replays and it doesn’t look great for him.

We have Jean-Baptiste Bruzulier waiting in the wings to take over at scrum-half because Charlie Mulchrone picked up an injury in the first leg.

JB was outstanding in the British and Irish Cup final at Doncaster Knights last month and he deserves his chance on the big stage. We have confidence in JB’s ability. He’s a big character in the dressing room and we have no reservations about him.

James Percival also picked up a yellow card, which was unnecessary, but I thought Mike Williams’ yellow card decision was very harsh.

Our front row of Ofa Fainga’anuku, Gus Creevy and Joe Rees deserve a lot of credit because the succession of scrums at the end could have sapped their energy. But they kept their intensity high and won us the penalty try.