Nottingham v Yorkshire Carnegie: Carnegie aim to bounce back against their ‘bogey’ team

Bryan Redpath’s side are keen to put behind them last week’s 10-7 home loss to London Welsh.

That was their fourth league defeat of the campaign and saw them drop a place to third.

Burrows admitted: “It was the first time this season that our set-piece did not function as we’d expected.

“I can’t put my finger on why that was but maybe teams are realising we’re such a threat in those areas and are now going to come and target us a lot more there. But we’ve worked on it in training this week ready for Nottingham.

“We realise teams will try and stop us there (line-out) so we have to come up with different answers if and when they do.”

Nottingham are up to fifth, just six points behind Carnegie, following a 34-22 win at Ealing Trailfinders last Saturday.

They have defeated Carnegie in three of their last four visits there and Burrows admitted: “It will be tough. It always is for us at Lady Bay. Nottingham seem to be our bogey team. We’ve not had the best of results down there in the past.

“But I’m sure if we execute what we’ve been working on in training and stick to the game-plan we’ll come out on top.

“We had a lot of territory against Welsh but we probably tried to play a little too much summer rugby in those (rainy) conditions rather than adapting and playing it more in their 22.

“But that’s fixable and something we can easily put right. It doesn’t require anything drastic and we’re not hitting the panic button for this week.”

The former Rotherham forward knows there is little margin for error. Doncaster have usurped them from second spot and, though they are still just five points adrift of leaders Bristol, he said: “It’s going to go right down to the wire. It’s really tight up there and that’s credit to all the teams in that area.”

Carnegie make four changes tonight. Pete Lucock comes in for the injured Tom Casson at centre with Chris Pilrim and Joel Hodgson starting as the half-backs rotate.

Kevin Sinfield is on the bench and, in the forwards, Chris Walker replaces Josh Bainbridge.