Kelly Brown relishing Murrayfield match for Saracens

SCOTLAND No 8 Kelly Brown has warned Edinburgh that their heroics of last season will ensure that no-one takes them lightly in 2012-13 after his club Saracens were drawn in the same pool for the forthcoming Heineken Cup.

Brown is stepping up his recovery from the dislocated fibula that ruled him out of Scotland’s RBS Six Nations campaign and the chance to captain the side then and on the current tour to Australasia. He sent messages of congratulations to the team on their win over Australia and is hopeful they can follow up with victory against Fiji on Saturday but admitted the historic win had only added fuel to his desire to return to the Test arena.

“The rehab is going really well and I am hoping to be back running fully in the next few weeks and be back early in the new season,” he said, “but it’s when you see a Heineken Cup draw like that and the boys doing well on tour that the determination to get back really builds.

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“The [Scotland] team was brilliant last week and I was delighted because the guys have worked very hard for that. But, now I look at the Heineken Cup and see that as a great stage for me to start to push myself back into the frame as I don’t want to miss more games. The fact that we’ve got Edinburgh and so I’ll be up at Murrayfield hopefully only makes it more exciting.”

As for the reaction from his Saracens team-mates, he added: “I think we’re all looking at it and saying ‘that’s a really tough draw, but exciting’.

“It always adds something when you’re playing against a side that you know really well, so I’m looking forward to coming back up to Edinburgh, but while I don’t think we fear anyone at Saracens we’ve taken note of Edinburgh’s great run in the Heineken Cup and I don’t expect anyone to underestimate them.

“It was good to get out of the pool last season, but we were by no means satisfied with that and we’ll definitely be working very hard to go further than the quarter-finals this time.

“But getting out of that pool is going to be a big enough challenge because all three teams we face are quality sides. They should all be cracking games.”