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Davies eyes up semi-final success

Davies eyes up semi-final success

Jonathan Davies is banking on the Scarlets closing down another British & Irish Lions outside half to keep alive their hopes of winning the Guinness PRO12.

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The Welsh region head to Dublin to take on Leinster in Friday night’s semi-final with Davies looking for his team mates to do a similar job on Johnny Sexton to the one they did on Dan Biggar in their final game of the regular season.

Opsreys pivot Biggar was unable to do anything to stop the Scarlets marching to a record 40-17 victory as Wayne Pivac’s men beat their Welsh rivals to third place in the table and set-up their trip to Dublin.

Now, their target is a man Davies knows well from the 2013 Lions tour.

“We didn’t give Dan Biggar a lot of time on the ball against the Ospreys. We made him work in defence, made him tackle and it will be important to do that again this week,” he said.

“The Leinster midfield axis is very, very strong. Johnny Sexton has been around for years, he has done it all and they will look to him to pull the strings to make sure he puts them in good positions on the field and keeps their tempo high.

“We need to ensure we don’t give him any time, put pressure on him when we can, and make it a tough day for him. We know Leinster love the big stage and it is down to us not to feel in awe of the situation.

“We’re the away team, Leinster were top of the table for pretty much all of the season and they reached the Champions Cup semi-finals. They’ll have a lot of confidence and we will go into the game as underdogs.

“But we will go quietly about our business and we shouldn’t fear anyone. We’re playing with a lot of confidence, we’re going in with five wins on the bounce and we should back ourselves to cause an upset.”

Davies will not only have Sexton to contend with, but also one of the men hoping to fill one of the two centre positions for the Lions in the Test series against the All Blacks next month, Robbie Henshaw.

Davies played in all three tests in Australia alongside Sexton four years ago and is hoping to hold on to his place in New Zealand.

“I’ve loved being back in Wales and I’m enjoying my rugby. Coming back from Clermont there was a lot of expectation and I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform,” added the powerful midfielder.

“It probably didn’t go the way I wanted it to at the start of the season and I had to persevere and work hard.

“Everything had changed from when I had been here before so it took a while to find my feet again.

“But it’s going reasonably well now and it has been a lot of fun. I couldn’t think of anything better than winning a trophy with my home region.”

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