Both teams lie in second spot in their domestic championships, despite defeats against Harlequins and Biarritz Olympique last weekend, with both clubs targeting going all the way to debut Heineken Cup finals. Saracens fell at the semi-final stage in 2008 in their only other appearance in the knock-out stages and Clermont are attempting to qualify for the semi-finals at the fourth time of asking.

All those defeats have been on the road - at Toulouse, Castres Olympique and in a 29-28 thriller at Leinster in 2010. Now they want to celerbate their centenary season in style by breaking their quarter-fianl duck and lifting Europe's top club trophy.

South Africa's 2007 World Cup winning captain John Smit, who joined Saracens this season and featured in five of their Pool matches, will have passed on some inside knowledge about Clermont after playing for the French club in 2007/08.

And he will have warned his new team-mates of the threats posed by players like Aurelien Rougerie, Wesley Fofana, Julien Malzieu, Julien Bonnaire, Morgan Parra, Brock James and Nathan Hines in a star-studded Clermont squad. Hines, of course, was a Heineken Cup winner with Leinster last season.

Saracens had seven players involved in the 2012 RBS 6 Nations, including new "finds" in 20-year-old outside half or centre Owen Farrell and lock Mouritz Botha, and are confident they can bounce back from the defeat by Quins that left them six points off the pace in the race for No 1 spot in the Premiership regular season.

Sarries stand alone as the sole English club in the last eight but have the carrot of playing a semi-final against the winner of the Leinster quarter-final against Cardiff Blues in England. They won the English Premiershiop at twickenham last year and will have two games in a row at the home of English rugby if they can go all the way to the final.

The 2012 Heineken Cup final will be the fourth at Twickenham Stadium and on each previous occasion an English club has carried off the title. Can Sarries make it a fourth?

The match will bring the curtain down on the Heineken Cup quarter-finals weekend with those prestigious semi-final places up for grabs.