With the Falcons languishing in 11th place in the Premiership, they see the Challenge Cup as their only chance of silverware this season and so are eager to fill one of the last two definite qualification slots for the Round of 16 from Pool A behind RC Toulon, who are already through.

“The lads have identified this tournament as something we can win and something we really want to go for and I’m sure the team selection will reflect that,” he told the Newcastle website.

“Sometimes you use Europe to rest guys and save them for the league, but we’ll be going hard at this competition and looking to win the thing.

“We want to use this tournament to really get something out of the season, rather than feeling like we’ve wasted people’s time due to that dip we had in the middle.

“We’ve got four games left in the Premiership and potentially another five in Europe and we’d all rather be playing nine games than five. We want to be involved in meaningful games rather than being sat doing nothing - and I’m sure our supporters would say the same.

“We’ve had a look at Zebre on the videos and in some ways we’ve seen some similarities between them and Worcester, who we played last weekend.

“That said, we had a good training week last week and played well on Saturday, so we don’t want to be changing a load of things just for the sake of it.”

Newcastle Falcons prop forward Mark Tampin has warned Zebre Parma that the Gallagher Premiership side will be at full throttle for their EPCR Challenge Cup Pool A decider at Kingston Park on Saturday.