Rob Andrew Last Quotations

He needs a fantastic pre-season and a great two months leading into the Autumn internationals. If you have seen what I have seen in the last three weeks, you will know this guy is a class act.

Joe has worked very hard in coming back from injury over the last year and continues to give us options in a number of positions.

Johnny has had the most complete week of training with the team since the injury happened. He was very close to being on the bench against Bristol last weekend, but the medical team bought him an extra week just to be absolutely certain.

Our actual level of performance has been as good as I can recall in the last five or six years. We've just not had enough breaks and results have slipped away from us. This game will be a good yardstick for us. Not one single person in the land expects us to win.

We are looking at his training schedule, as we do with all the players. He has been extremely unlucky with the trauma injuries he has suffered in the last few years, but we are in an impact sport and there is no way of preventing these things.

I've been confident all pre-season that we can compete with anybody, and I still firmly believe it. Northampton lost a lot of games at home last season, so there will be a bit of tension there for the fans and the players. If we can achieve the level of performance we did at Sale (Newcastle lost 26-25), we believe we can cause them problems.

We have seen Grant play against us first hand in Europe last season, and we believe he will be a solid addition to our front row.

The attrition rate and the physicality we see in the game these days is immense, as you could see from the six Premiership matches last weekend, some of which were basically 80 minutes of sheer warfare.