It will be the clash of the Pool 3 heavyweights - and Toulon will have plenty of inside knowledge when they collide with Saracens at Stade Felix-Mayol on Thursday night in Round 2 of the Amlin Challenge Cup.
The French club, who include Jonny Wilkinson amongst their newcomers, opened their campaign with a valuable 33-17 away win at Castres Olympique while Saracens beat Rugby Rovigo 36-12 at Vicarage Road. French international hooker Sebastien Bruno, who switched to Toulon from Sale Sharks in the summer, sat out the opener but is in contention to face Saracens, declaring:
"All being well I should hopefully play against Saracens. "We have the opportunity to count on players who know about English rugby, like Jonny, Juan Fernandez Lobbe, Tonga Leaaetoa and myself, so we hope this will prove useful against what we know will be really tough opponents.
"No doubt it will be a very physical and intense game. The English clubs play the Amlin Challenge Cup to access the Heineken Cup and it makes no difference to them, they go into the games as determined as you can be for any fixtures.
"At Toulon this year we want to be competitive on both fronts, domestic and Europe, and while the club was struggling last year after only just being promoted from ProD2, there is a wealth of players to choose from to make us real contenders.
"However, our pool is a difficult one and it was an important match to win at Castres - it was encouraging for what now lies ahead of us. It was a good start and a relief for us to have won this opening game since we lost against Castres the previous week in the Top 14. Obviously we wanted to make up for last week's defeat and we did it.
"You could say it was a sort of revenge but the outfit was different on Friday night than the one we presented in Top 14 and that shows we have the talent and potential amongst our group to respond and go away and get a win. And that makes it very interesting from the coaches perspective because they have the quality and the quantity now to do things.
"On top of that, because of the number of our players we now have the time in between games to focus on all the details and defects of our game, both individually and as a group, and there is a lot of positive competition amongst the players for starting places."
