I suppose you could say we have arrived at the business end of the season.
When the likes of Leinster show up in your back yard for a Heineken Cup quarter-final, it's pretty obvious that the stakes in the season are about to be raised, and we are all really excited about playing them at The Stoop on Sunday.
I'm pretty confident that it will be a great game for the neutral to watch. We've tried to play a fairly expansive style of rugby this season and Leinster are well-known for their back line.
With the likes of Brian O'Driscoll, Gordon D'Arcy and Felipe Contepomi they are always going to be tough to handle. So this week at Quins we've just been keeping our heads down, cracking on with training, and other than that getting as much rest as possible.
A Heineken Cup quarter-final is a bit of an unknown quantity for a lot of us in the Quins squad. I think Andy Gomersall might have played one before but it's new territory for a lot of us. It's not pressure that I'm feeling, it's more a sense of excitement. The challenges just seem to be getting bigger and better as the season goes on.
The Stade Francais game when we beat them in Paris was a stand-out game. But looking back to our first game in the Heineken Cup this season, we were 20 points down at half-time and still managed to come back and win that one. That showed our spirit and there have been plenty of others that showed how together we are as a team.
Beating Bath at The Rec last week took a massive effort defensively and again I think that showed how together we are as a team. I think we made something like 220 tackles.
We've had to dig deep quite a few times on Sunday and maybe we'll have to do the same against Leinster. Although we're at home I'd say Leinster would have to be going in as favourites for this one. Their squad is packed with international players and we don't mind being billed as underdogs.
But for us it doesn't really matter. We'll go out and play our own game and not worry too much about them.
We were determined not to let Batch cross our line last weekend and that's set the standard we've set ourselves now. We need to go out and do it again on Sunday.
