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Flood focused on taking on Toulon challenge

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Fly-half Toby Flood says the Leicester Tigers players face a "huge opportunity and huge challenge" in Sunday's Heineken Cup quarter-final.

Flood has captained Tigers to successive away wins over Exeter Chiefs and Northampton Saints in the Aviva Premiership and is now preparing for a contest against Toulon in the last eight of Europe’s elite club competition.

“We have to work as hard as we can and think it is a huge opportunity and huge challenge and will not stop for 80 minutes,” says Flood.

“We appreciate they are an outstanding team and that we need to be as good as we can be and get it right. You cannot always control what other people do so what you do is just concentrate on getting your own game right.”

Flood is preparing to face former Newcastle and England team-mate Jonny Wilkinson for the first time in his career and said: “Jonny is doing exactly what he has done for the last three or four years, playing with the same intensity and the same hunger.”

Richard Cockerill and Matt O’Connor gave Flood the captaincy of the Tigers team on his return from the Six Nations in the absence of Geordan Murphy and Louis Deacon, and the England international says he thoroughly enjoyed leading out the team at both Exeter and Northampton.

“It is great to be part of it and it is an honour, but there are a lot of leaders in the team,” he said. “You know who the leaders are in the squad, the ones who will speak and lead or the ones who lead by their actions and you all get on with your role in it.”