Dance of the desperates
London Irish have not quite reached the make or break stage this season, but hooker David Paice admits his side need to beat London Welsh to revive their faltering campaign.
Brian Smith's side fell to their sixth consecutive Premiership defeat against a rampant Wasps side looking to honour their new stadium last weekend.
While bottom-side London Welsh would seem to be the ideal opponents for Irish to reverse their unwanted run, Paice is refusing to take their fellow Exiles lightly.
Irish are also seeking their first home victory this season but should be boosted by a raucous crowd at the Madejski Stadium on Boxing Day.
And with an impressive victory over Cardiff Blues in Europe in recent weeks, Paice is confident his side have plenty of positives to draw on to refresh their league challenge.
"London Welsh aren't necessarily the best team for us to be playing as they are a tough team to play against," he said.
"Against Leicester they were in the game for 65 minutes. They are not a bad rugby team and we will have to be at our best to win.
"It's not quite do or die at this stage, but it's still a huge game for us. We need to win to get our confidence back up.
"The players need to get back to doing good things in the right areas and hopefully we can get the win.
"We played well for the majority of the game against Wasps and got a good result the weekend before against Cardiff Blues.
"It's important that we as players stay positive, because if we get a couple of wins together that might really kick-start things for us."
With London Irish falling to 11th place in recent weeks, London Welsh scrum-half Rob Lewis admits his side are hoping to reel in the other Exiles with victory on Friday.
And with the 27-year-old expecting a lively crowd, he insists that his players will also be able to feed off the energy to match up to the hosts' powerful pack.
"London Irish are 11th at the moment and we are 12th so that automatically makes them our competition and we want to close the gap on them," he said.
"We will have to front up and we know their pack is going to make the game tough so we'll have to make sure our forwards put in a good performance.
"I expect it will be a great physical battle and they've got a powerful scrum and our task will be to try and match that.
"We'll have to take any points on offer when the opportunities arise and put ourselves in contention.
"It will be a great occasion with the game being on Boxing Day. The last time I played a Premiership game on Boxing Day there was close to 10,000 people in the stands and hopefully there will be a similar size crowd this weekend."
