WE know that Newcastle will come to Sixways on Friday night and scrap for everything.

Someone said to me the other day that the Falcons players won’t just be playing for their club or for each other, but for their families and livelihoods.

There is no guarantee your job and your income is safe if your team gets relegated and we know first hand what that can do to you as a squad.

Newcastle will be desperately pulling together to fight relegation and that is the sort of attitude we can expect from them.

That is what we saw in their recent game against Harlequins, who maybe took a step backwards when it got quite physical.

It is up to us to make sure we are ready for that and it will also be important to control the way the game is played and the tempo.

They will look to batter us into our own half and squeeze the life out of us — there will be some big hits going in and it should be an exciting evening under the lights.

We have our discipline in mind every week, but it will be especially important against Falcons as they have Jimmy Gopperth who will kick penalties right into the corners or through the posts — they will want to keep the scoreboard ticking over and, if we’re not careful, they could find themselves nine points ahead in no time.

It will be difficult to make sure we hit the ground running on Friday after two weeks without a match.

The last fortnight has been about getting the balance right between training and down time, but we have also been able to get some good contact sessions in.

In years gone by, there has been times when we have litterally been given two weeks off and left completely to our own devices, which often doesn’t work.

But we have been in to the club a fair bit over the last couple of weeks and training at a decent intensity, but still making sure we are all fresh for Friday night’s match.

There will be no excuses for being over or under-trained.

With the likes of Kai Horstmann and Neil Best fit again, we are starting to have our full squad available for selection now, which doesn’t really happen too often at any club, and there is also an extra edge in training.

Everyone is scrapping for their jersey and that is what you want going into the last few games of the season.