HEINEKEN CUP SEMI-FINAL
Venue: Millennium Stadium Date: Sunday, 3 May Kick-off: 1500 BST Coverage: Commentary on BBC Radio 5 Live sports extra, BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Leicester and online, plus text commentary on BBC Sport website. Live on Sky Sports 2

Dai Young has been coach at the Arms Park since 2002

Dai Young predicts Cardiff Blues' Heineken Cup semi-final showdown with Leicester Tigers will boast the quality of an international Test match.

Young leads his team into their biggest game since the Blues region was founded in 2003, boosted by their 50-12 EDF Energy Cup final win over Gloucester.

Cardiff last appeared in a European semi in 1997, the year after their Heineken Cup final defeat by Toulouse.

"This game will be a mini-international," said Blues coach Young.

Cardiff rugby club contested the first European final when the Black and Blues were beaten 21-18 at the old Cardiff Arms Park in 1996.

The Welsh side qualified for the next four Heineken Cup quarter-finals - reaching the last four in 1997 when they lost 26-13 to French club Brive.

The Arms Park team failed to progress further than the group stages for the next six years until their 41-17 quarter-final defeat to Toulouse last season.

Now the Blues face rugby powerhouses Leicester, twice conquerors of Europe in 2001 and 2002 and Heineken Cup runners-up in 2007.

Young's class of 2009 is the seventh time a Welsh team has reached a Heineken Cup semi-final.

What we'll have going for us is that hopefully 50,000 Welsh supporters will be right behind us and I think that can be our 16th man Cardiff Blues coach Dai Young

And the Blues coach hopes every rugby fan, regardless of their regional allegiance, helps to make a carnival atmosphere inside the Millennium Stadium on Sunday and cheer the Blues into a European final for the good of Welsh rugby.

"It would be great if the neutral supporters and even supporters from other regions came to get behind the Blues as it is a mini-international," said Young.

"It is a real England-Wales tussle.

"What we'll have going for us is that hopefully 50,000 Welsh supporters will be right behind us and I think that can be our 16th man.

"It should be a great game with a Test-match intensity."

Leicester's Geordan Murphy claimed the English giants should use the Lions' selection imbalance as motivation to beat the Blues.

Six players from the Welsh region - Gethin Jenkins, Martyn Williams, Leigh Halfpenny, Tom Shanklin, Andy Powell and Jamie Roberts - will travel to South Africa on the Lions tour this summer while only Harris Ellis from the Tigers will make the trip to face the world champions.

Murphy wrote in his Observer newspaper column that "we have to use our lack of Lions compared to the Blues, Munster and Leinster to our advantage."

606: DEBATE Both teams are playing well in both defence and attack and if either goes into the game thinking all the opposition will do is defend, then more fool them Big

But Young dismissed that motivation as "misguided."

"Certainly our motivation from a Blues' point of view is to win for the Blues," said Young. "Immaterial of who's in the Lions and who's not.

"Their motivation is misguided because their motivation should be to win for Leicester.

"We're going into it with a lot of self-belief, a lot of confidence, a lot of momentum.

"But we're respectful enough to know as well that if we're not at our best we'll come second best.

"That's how good Leicester are. I'm confident if we can play anywhere near the standards that we have over the last couple of weeks, I'm confident we'll win.

"But if we step anywhere off that, we'll come unstuck.

"As Leicester are used to these big games, big occasions and playing on big stages so they will come in the right frame of mind."

The winner of Sunday's semi-final will play the winner of Saturday's all-Irish Munster v Leinster semi-final at Murrayfield on 23 May.

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