Bournemouth Director Of Rugby Will Croker says his side are hoping to challenge themselves in their first pre-season match against Birmingham and Solihull tomorrow.
Their opponents were once made famous for one of the biggest shocks in English rugby when under their previous name "Pertemps Bees", they toppled then-champions Wasps 28-24 in the National Cup in 2004.
Bournemouth Director Of Rugby Will Croker says his side are hoping to challenge themselves in their first pre-season match against Birmingham and Solihull tomorrow.
Their opponents were once made famous for one of the biggest shocks in English rugby when under their previous name "Pertemps Bees", they toppled then-champions Wasps 28-24 in the National Cup in 2004.
They will provide Croker's men with their first test before the new South West Premier campaign begins on September 1 and Croker is looking forward to assessing what level his squad are currently at.
He said: "We have been back now for six weeks and we have done a block of three weeks' worth of defensive work followed by another block of three weeks but on attacking work and now we are ready to challenge ourselves and see where we are.
"We know we are not going to be the finished article yet, we have actually still got a number of layers to add to the onion which we have not even touched on in pre-season.
"But it is just a good opportunity to test our basic systems and see how we get on.
"First and foremost, it is going to be a really difficult game, and from doing a bit of research on them, I know a couple of guys who play for them and they swanned through Midlands Premier last year and were runaway winners - like Dings Crusaders were in our league."
Croker has been pulling in all of the favours to do research on their opponents, who coasted their way to the Midlands Premier Division title last season after losing just twice all season.
But with powerful prop Joe Tarrant making his return and Mike Pope coming back to the club too, Croker says he is excited to see what his side have to offer following six weeks of hard pre-season slog.
He added: "We are going to be without a couple of guys which is always the case at this time of year.
"So we will not see Kareem Lynch yet or Hamish Renwick or Tim Collier.
"But we have Joe Tarrant making his return as is Mike Pope, so it is going to be really exciting to see how those guys go and we have then got a couple of really exciting newcomers who are not really known to Bournemouth but are guys who we really think have a good chance of making an impact.
"We have Ben Roberts - a blindside flanker - and Ben Flet playing at openside, and we have another Ben - Ben Russell on the bench.
"Then in the backs we have Adam Higgins making his return and we also have a young scrum-half - Liam Driscoll - so it is exciting and it is what we have been working towards."
