London Welsh’s Carl Kirwan, Mitch Lees, Ben West and James Tincknell warmed up for this afternoon’s huge British & Irish Cup clash with London Scottish with a cooking lesson.

A rugby player's diet can be dull and repetitious at the best of times so under the guidance of head chef Anthony Shaw, who’s been serving up delicious and nutritious food to London Welsh’s players at the club’s Old Deer Park training ground for the past seven years, the players cooked up a variety of marinated chicken stir-fry dishes, as well as salmon, before sitting down to enjoy the fruits of their hard work.

“We’re all pretty keen on our diets and Anthony offered to help us out and show us a few tips,” said London Welsh flanker Carl Kirwan.

“The general diet is chicken and broccoli and Anthony showed us some chicken marinates – one was taranaki and another was yoghurt – to just try and add some flavour.

"I’m always keen to learn new things and it was good fun, and Anthony knows his stuff.”

Chef Shaw said: “I enjoyed it and the boys enjoyed it and that was the main thing.

“Hopefully they’ve taken a few things on board from and some of them do seem really keen to cook.

"We’re now looking to roll this out once a fortnight. We’ll get different boys next time and perhaps do cooking meats, pasta, marinates – whatever they want to do.”

Welsh make the short trip to the Athletic Ground today in the British & Irish Cup knowing that victory is a must if they are to have any chance of progressing to the quarter-finals.

“It’s a huge game; London Scottish are the only team we haven’t beaten this season. The Championship game at the Kassam before Christmas was hugely disappointing – we had a lot of ball but we just didn’t take our chances,” added Kirwan.

“We’ve had a very good week and the team have performed really well in training, very precise, and hopefully we can take it into Saturday’s game.”