HIGH Wycombe’s players have been challenged to meet muscle with muscle this Saturday and next.

They play third and first in Southern Counties North and although promotion looks a long shot now, Wycs want to lay down a few markers for next season.

Aylesbury are first up at Kingsmead this weekend, before Wycombe go to leaders Bletchley the following weekend.

Coach Luke Harding said: “We’ve got Aylesbury and then Bletchley and those games will give us an indication of where we are and what we need to do next season.

“When we’ve played the bigger teams, I think skill wise we’ve been a match for them.

“But some of these teams have a physical presence that we’ve struggled with.

“We don’t always win the collision and it’s hard to get a result if you’re not winning the rucks and they’re running through your defence.

“Everything is in place, we’ve got the gameplan and we can play decent enough rugby, but we’ve got to man up.”

Aylesbury beat Wycombe 36-5 earlier in the season and Bletchley won 35-5 a week later, but Harding is expecting a much closer contest this time around.

He said: “I don’t see us getting promotion unless there is a big slip up somewhere, but we want to finish as high as we can and we’re interested in putting in performances each week.

“Two weeks ago we were brilliant against Alchester. I know they’re bottom, but the conditions were atrocious and we nilled them.

“From a coaches point of view, they did everything we talked about. But now we’ve got to build on that.”