For them to win, they need the four of them to have a big game."Warrington, Wigan's first Super League opponents in March, are likely to start with Renouf's former Brisbane team-mates, Allan Langer and the newly-signed Kevin Walters, as their half-back combination.Lee Briers played outside Langer last season and had an impressive World Cup with Wales, but the Wolves are concerned about a knee injury and have sent him for an examination.The Warrington coach, Darryl Van de Velde, has also hinted that, even fully fit, Briers might have a better chance of getting into the team in another position - such as full-back.The former Warrington winger, Mark Forster, needs one try at Chorley tomorrow to bring up a total of 200 during his long career. Forster, now with Widnes, has twice been frustrated by the weather as he waited for an opportunity to reach the milestone, but would fancy his chances against the Lynx, who have not won for 29 games.Subject to a thaw by tomorrow afternoon, the leaders Keighley have a potentially tricky match at third-placed Doncaster, who along with the reigning champions, Dewsbury, are in a three-way battle to represent Yorkshire in the Trans-Pennine Cup final. Leigh, already assured of Lancashire's place in the mid-season event, are at home to Workington.Sheffield's match at home to Dewsbury, postponed last night, is now due be played at 7.30 tomorrow, while Castleford and Halifax will try to play their pre-season friendly, also frozen off, next Tuesday.Northern Ford Premiership clubs have set up a working party to look into the vexed question of which months of the year should form their season. Plans were in place for an October start, but the replacement of Bob McDermott as chairman by Chris Hamilton has made that less of a fait accompli.. As the scorer of the try from nowhere on Grand Slam day at Twickenham in 1991, and the principal architect of the try from the end of the world that beat the All Blacks on their own dungheap three years later, Monsieur Philippe Saint-André of Romans, Clermont-Ferrand, Montferrand and, latterly, Gloucester RFC, must have been seriously offended by the one-dimensional, muscle-bound half-wittery he witnessed at Kingsholm last weekend "There was no creativity, no imagination," he agrees. "The rugby we played against Llanelli was 100 years old, I think." As the scorer of the try from nowhere on Grand Slam day at Twickenham in 1991, and the principal architect of the try from the end of the world that beat the All Blacks on their own dungheap three years later, Monsieur Philippe Saint-André of Romans, Clermont-Ferrand, Montferrand and, latterly, Gloucester RFC, must have been seriously offended by the one-dimensional, muscle-bound half-wittery he witnessed at Kingsholm last weekend "There was no creativity, no imagination," he agrees.

"The rugby we played against Llanelli was 100 years old, I think." More disgusted than offended then? "No, not at all," he says, chuckling."This is a professional sport now, a very selfish game, so my principles are dead. Yes, I love to see the double-miss moves and the double switches, the crazy rugby. But I prefer to win, and the match against Llanelli was all about spirit and commitment, about 15 players who badly wanted the result. It was a war, and we won the war."I have no regrets about beating Llanelli in a style based on simplicity: big scrum, big tackles, big territory. My players had produced good rugby and scored wonderful tries in the Premiership against Bath and Leicester and Northampton, and had lost cruelly: either in injury time or through goal kicks Their self-confidence was low.

So I say to them: 'Be happy in this match, enjoy the atmosphere If we lose, I take all the shit. None of it hits you.' And in the end, they did enjoy it."In many ways, the Frenchman is the most riveting figure in modern-day British rugby: a master magician incarcerated in a spit- and-sawdust West Country club where illusions traditionally occur only after nine pints of scrumpy. There is no need to watch the rugby when Saint-André's Gloucester are at work: it is possible to chart the course of a contest by observing the coach as he paces up and down the touchline, his arms waving in all directions at once. When Saint-André is angry - and he becomes apoplectic at least a dozen times a game - his English fails him; maybe there are not enough oaths in Shakespeare's tongue to satisfy his craving for the profane.So he turns to one of his fellow Frenchmen - the hooker Olivier Azam, perhaps, or his in-house medic Jean-Pierre Darnaud - and lets rip with a few "sacré bleus".Last week, though, he was unusually calm as he watched his charges reel in a 13-point Llanelli lead and win 28-27 with the aid of a perverse drop goal in the final minute of normal time.

That victory set up this afternoon's must-win European Cup tie with Roma at Stadio Tre Fontane, a 5,000-capacity venue of no obvious merit. If Gloucester win, they will secure themselves a Heineken Cup quarter-final place at the first time of asking. Saint-André is excited for his players, but fearful too."There is a big danger for us in Rome: that we start the game thinking we are already in the quarter-finals. These Italians demand our respect, not our complacency; Colomiers, a strong French side, won only 14-5 there, and Roma missed five or six kicks at goal that day They are strong at the scrum, organised at the line-out They are physical in all areas. Even if we are in the correct mood, it will be difficult for us to win the first 15 minutes In fact, Roma will play well for 55 or 60 minutes. We must show patience and discipline, we must attend to the small details. Then, maybe, we can win the last 20 minutes and also the match."Saint-André's tactical calculations, precise and unequivocal, fly directly in the face of British assumptions about French rugby.