London Irish v Dragons

BE bold and go for it, Michael Owen will urge his Newport Gwent Dragons team written off as no-hopers in today's Heineken Cup clash against London Irish at the Madejski Stadium, Reading.

Owen takes over the captaincy from Colin Charvis, one of 15 players who could not be considered by the Dragons for a dead game as far as they are concerned though for London Irish there is a home quarter-final at stake.

"We have been in this position before, but we've been to places like Sale and Munster in the competition and done really well though we've lost," said Owen.

"It's a dead game for us which it shouldn't be if we had won some previous games instead of letting ourselves down. But we've got to go for it, it should be a brilliant occasion at the Madejski Stadium and we'll still be looking to go up there and perform.

"It was tough playing on Tuesday and Friday last week. Glasgow was all about going there to win and in the first half we produced a controlled performance and did the right things and though they chipped away at us after that, we held on for a good win.

"It was a great win against the Scarlets and we performed really encouragingly. Now we've got to cut out the errors because close games can turn your season around.

"We weren't far off qualifying for the EDF semi-finals and in Europe we should definitely have won two games, so we're not that far away.

"If we had won in Perpignan and beaten Treviso at home it would have put a totally different complexion on our season, we could have been in a hell of a position.

"It's a fine line between success and failure and if we had won the games we narrowly lost everyone would have been talking about us.

"But there is no one reason why we can't go to London Irish and beat them. There are still a lot of good players in our team, it's going to be tough but if we are bold and go for it with the right mindset you never know, anything can happen."