COACH Matt Ferguson is confident Bristol can pose Newcastle questions the runaway Championship leaders will not have been asked so far this season when the sides meet on Saturday.
Bristol will first be hoping that Doncaster can produce one of the biggest shocks of the Championship season by winning at Bedford this evening.
Bristol's scrum coach Matt Ferguson
Fourth-placed Bristol are level on points with Bedford, who are fifth, but have won one more game than the Blues, who will send Doncaster into National League if they beat them this evening.
If Bedford collect even a point this evening, they will knock Bristol out of the top four going into the weekend, meaning it is almost guaranteed that Bristol will have to win at Newcastle to have any chance of securing a play-off place.
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That is daunting enough in itself, as Newcastle have won all 28 competitive matches they have played so far this season, including a 37-20 victory at Bristol on the opening day.
But scrum coach Ferguson said: "It's still out of our hands, but how we'll approach this week is that we'll go there with our game and try to impose ourselves.
"We've shown in the last few weeks that, if we do that and we're accurate in our game-plan, we can ask teams questions.
"We'll work hard this week, and we'll get on the bus on Friday knowing that if we give them 80 minutes of our best rugby, we'll ask them questions I don't think they have been asked this season. That is one thing we've got to ask – have they been put under massive amounts of pressure? We have been – we've been in some pretty low places.
"And I just wonder if they've had that – 80 minutes of someone really going at them and asking them lots of questions."
Newcastle's numbers – 28 wins from 28 in the Championship and British & Irish Cup, averaging 31.5 points per game in the league and only 11 points against – can make for daunting reading.
But Ferguson said Bristol, who produced arguably their best performance of the season in last weekend's 38-19 win at London Scottish, have nothing to fear.
"You can't take away what Newcastle's achievements are – their achievements have been fantastic," he said.
"They've got some top-quality players and an excellent coaching staff, but we've done our analysis and this is very much about us doing what we have to do.
"And we believe there are areas where we can ask them questions. If we felt we couldn't go there and do a job, then we'd have lost from the start."
Regardless of what happens between Bedford and Doncaster this evening, the race for the top four places in the Championship will go down to Saturday's final round of fixtures.
Leeds, Bristol and Bedford are vying for two spots in the play-offs, with Newcastle and Nottingham already assured of their top-four berths.
And Ferguson said: "A lot of games at this time of the year are dead rubbers – but this clearly isn't.
"Newcastle are going for an unbeaten league season, which would be a phenomenal achievement, and we need to fight for our lives for the play-offs.
"Our boys are buoyant and fit and feeling comfortable and they can really ask questions, because, as we know, it's do or die – it's a cup final.
"Let's just go there and give ourselves the best chance possible. We knew four weeks ago that we'd probably have to win our last four games, and nothing has changed. This team is good when its backs are against the wall."
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