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(From Northampton Chronicle and Echo)
ASSISTANT coach Paul Grayson is backing his players to perform in tonight's Heineken European Cup quarter-final in front of 37,000 fanatical Toulouse supporters.
Despite sacking their coach, being tangled in a season-long battle against relegation, having their No.1 scrum-half banned for 14 weeks and being publicly flogged in the media by two of their former South African imports, Saints are still quietly confident on reaching the semi-finals.
And player-coach Paul Grayson promised before taking on one of European rugby's big guns: "We are going into this game and we will leave nothing behind. Absolutely nothing.
"We are playing Toulouse away in a packed football stadium in the quarter-finals of the Heineken Cup. And if a player isn't excited about that, they should quit.
"We've been calming them down this week, not building them up." But Grayson would forego tonight's pulsating European theatre for guaranteed Premiership rugby next season.
He was brought in as Budge Pountney's assistant to salvage Saints when Alan Solomons shown the door and he said: "In all the turmoil we managed to get ourselves into the quarter-finals of the ...