Obviously in your playing career, you were involved with many local derbies, can you give us an idea of what it's like from a playing side of things going into games like this.

Well the atmosphere is tense, the rivalry is so fierce, we know what's at stake for the fans and the bragging rights to get one up on their rivals. It's about managing your adrenaline, your nerves, your emotions and not getting caught up so much in what you're seeing around you and hearing around you and continue to do what you do normally.

If the team can do that individually and collectively then we'll come out on top and that's all I've been stating to my players, it's just another game.

We know the importance, we can't change that but what we can do is go out there and produce the performances that we have done of late because they've been outstanding, the players have been first class and I don't envisage them changing their games.

The players training today

Obviously even as professionals, it's still difficult to keep a lid on it or getting swept up on it.

There's going to be some tackles flying about, there's going to be adrenaline pumping no doubt and we do see probably a few more bookings in derbies than we would in normal games and that's natural. It is going to take a strong ref which I hope we've got because we haven't had one of late, so it'll take a strong referee to manage it in the correct way because he's got to understand what it means and the intensity of the match, so hopefully that will come.

We have a lot of players that play on that edge so to speak, and they're going to need to do that but not overstep it.