The Russian outfit are making their first appearance in continental competition, and put up creditable performances in their Pool 1 defeats against Connacht and Newcastle last month.

Now, Valeev’s men face another stern examination at the hands of French Top 14 outfit Brive, who are going well in their domestic league, lying fifith in the table, and are looking to bounce back from their defeat to Connacht in Ireland in round 2.

Connacht found the long journey out to Siberia and the freezing conditions made for an uncomfortable and challenging afternoon’s work against the tournament newcomers, and Valeev hopes the lessons learned from their loss at Newcastle can help them take the game to their next opponents.

“These matches are very difficult for us and the opponents are a lot stronger, but we will continue to strive to improve because this is an important opportunity for Russian rugby,” said Valeev.

“We have returned home from playing Newcastle and worked very hard on our game and cutting out the mistakes we made.

“We hope to improve our attacking play as against Newcastle we did not threaten as much as we would have liked to.

“But we are gathering information all the time in this tournament and it is only going to help us get better and we want to show that improvement.”

Match Facts

• In what will be Enisei’s third match in the competition they will face French opposition for the first time.
• Enisei-STM lost their opening two games in the competition, conceding 30+ points in both.
• Brive have won only one of their last nine Challenge Cup matches, their only win in that span a 13-9 victory over Newcastle Falcons in their opening fixture this season.
• Brive have won all 12 matches in the Challenge Cup against teams from outside the Six Nations countries, scoring an average of 58 points per game in the process.