Will Greenwood

My guide to the Champions Cup quarter-finals

SCARLETS V LA ROCHELLE

Today 5.30pm TV BT Sport 2

Where the match will be won and lost Hold on to your hats and pray for a nice evening. These are two sides who will go from anywhere, anytime, any score. The only way they know is attack, attack, attack.

La Rochelle set off like a steam train in this year’s tournament but couldn’t sustain the excellence. After getting 15 points in the bag in the first three rounds, they were grateful for five in the next three. La Rochelle, for all their skill, have proved beatable. Just stay in the game early and survive the onslaught.

The question now is if they follow the same plan in the knockout stages.

They have a combination of power, pace and offloading perhaps only ever matched by Clermont at their best. They have a desire to play from anywhere that has rarely been seen from French teams in recent years, with insane pace and support play. But La Rochelle also want to land the knockout blows through tries and rock you into errors as you chase the game. If they do not land the big blows, the worry is that their lack of experience at this level will hurt them.

Scarlets could not have been more different. They needed the dying seconds of round three to scrape home for their first win against Benetton, and they were being read their last rites when Steff Evans produced the magic to score one and create another to snatch victory in the dying seconds against the Italian team and put the Welsh back in the tournament. Round five produced the masterclass at the Rec to destroy Bath and round six the nerve, as Toulon were downed at Parc y Scarlets.

Prediction

I may as well stick to my guns and go down in a blaze of glory with La Rochelle, whom I tipped to win the cup before a ball was kicked.