Fear will be a motivating factor for Glasgow Warriors as they head to one of the most intimidating venues in European rugby this weekend bidding for the right to host a Champions Cup quarter-final for the first time.

An 11 point victory is required to edge the head-to-head with English champions Saracens and top the pool and assistant coach Jason O’Halloran reckons that as brave as they will need to be to achieve that, an awareness of what might happen if they do not front up will help drive their effort.

“Some of our best performances of the past two years have been against Munster. We know when we play Munster that if we get it wrong physically we can get embarrassed. The little edge can bring out the best of us physically. The threat of what Saracens could do if we don’t get it right should have us at our best physically,” he suggested.

To that end he believes they will benefit from the experience of meeting these opponents on the competition’s opening weekend.

“There are definitely lessons out of that, number one being that you have to be really physical and I think we did a good job of that,” he said.

“Despite what people were saying prior to the game, our setpiece held up really well and the scrum was good, we did enough around maul to keep numbers in. The key thing about that game, the six linebreaks we had we didn’t convert into tries. That’s the major thing, people understanding what’s in front of them, what that means in terms of our decision making and executing accurately from there.

“I would agree that we haven’t been at that level since. We need to get back to that. The good thing from last weekend is that our set-piece was really good. We dominated the scrum and the lineout maul was really effective. That’s the cornerstone of what you do.

“To be successful you have to work around your own strengths and know how the opposition will come at you. We are know as an attacking side, so teams will have a go at our set-piece so we don’t get ball. They’ll attack the breakdown so our ball is slow and they will bring line speed to cut off the wide channels.”

“The answers to all that are: get a good set-piece, get over the gain line, play at a tempo. When you get overlaps, execute your catch-and-pass properly. Those are the things we’re trying to do.”

They must make their bid without club co-captain Callum Gibbins, who is waiting to find out how seriously he damaged his knee during Sunday’s defeat of Cardiff, but could be out for the next two months and with fellow back-row forward Matt Fagerson, also injured during that match, also set to miss the trip to London, Matt Smith has been called into the squad.

The pack also looks set to be bolstered by the return of Jonny Gray, who missed the Cardiff match with a shoulder problem, but midfielder Pete Horne is not expected to recover from his knee problem in time.