Back prepares Leeds for biggest contest of his time at Carnegie

“Well, they’ve still got a quality side,” says Leeds Carnegie’s head coach, who, while not publicly admitting it, is hoping his old club do his current one a massive favour.

For relegation-haunted Leeds host Harlequins on Sunday in a game Back describes as ‘critical’ to their chances of avoiding the drop, yet a five-point victory for the Falcons tonight at home to the title-chasing Tigers would render the game almost inconsequential.

To achieve any sort of win over Leicester would be a considerable turn-up for the books by a Newcastle team that two weeks ago were edged out by Leeds in a game that gave the Yorkshire club renewed hope in their season-long battle against relegation.

Newcastle’s subsequent losing bonus point against Northampton moved them back ahead of Leeds and with three games to play as opposed to the two Leeds have left, Alan Tait’s men are in the driving seat.

Hence the bearing their game at Kingston Park tonight could have on the future of Leeds Carnegie.

Back, though, will spend Good Friday with his family and as far away as possible from events in the North East.

“I can’t influence the outcome,” he says. “We’re not playing against either of those teams again this season. I’ll be trying to relax, chilling out, doing something else with my family who will probably run me ragged.

“Although I say I’ll be doing other things, it’s a 24/7 job and my mind will probably be on it.”

When you have invested so much in the Leeds project as Back has these last three years, it would be hard for him not to be sick with worry as Newcastle look to keep the survival fight in their own hands, no matter how much he tries to avoid the action.

Leeds’ recent from – the stinging Wasps defeat aside – merits another shot at extricating themselves from this predicament. They have won three of their last six yet it is a sequence that will count for nothing if they fail to take the fight to the last day at Northampton.

“It’s the biggest game for Leeds since I’ve been at the club,” said Back of Sunday’s visit of Harlequins, who took over alongside Andy Key in June, 2008.

“We recognise what’s on the game. We were very disappointed with the score and part of the performance at Wasps and we need to get back to winning ways.

“We always talk about the next game as the biggest, but there’s definitely more of an edge on this one.

“It is critical we come away with a win or at worst a point. The players know that, we’ve got the Wasps result out of our system now and it’s important we put it right in front of a vocal Yorkshire crowd.”

Back and Leeds are hoping for a crowd of 10,000 on Easter Sunday to generate the same kind of atmosphere that propelled them to victory 12 months ago in the relegation shootout with Worcester.

A year on and the situation is just as precarious.

“You learn from the experiences of the past and, hopefully, we can draw on that win,” said Back, who plans to freshen up his squad after the Wasps loss, although Marco Wentzel is again absent.

“When your back’s against the wall it’s about who turns up mentally and takes their breaks,” he said. “We’ve been under that mental pressure all season, although we’ve performed well with what we’ve got. We’re competing in one of the best leagues in the world and being bottom of that league for much of the season brings its own mental pressures. The players have handled that really well. We’ve got to take all that belief into the game on Sunday.

“The guys are anxious, they’ll focus on the game, but we’ve said to them all week ‘just give all you can, because you don’t want to come off the field thinking you could have tried harder’.

“We’ve got to give everything. If we fail it won’t be through lack of effort.

“There are no worries that confidence has suffered (after the Wasps defeat).”

Harlequins – for whom former Leeds product Danny Care will pull the strings – represent dangerous opponents given their quest for a top-six finish. They thrashed Leeds in November, but have won only once on the road.

“They have a lot of control through the forwards and the half-backs in Nick Evans and Danny Care are international-class players who can be deadly,” said Back. “We can certainly beat them if we stick to our strengths and negate theirs.”

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