In a competition that has already thrown up some high quality matches, this weekend promises to raise the bar even further when competition leaders Russia travel to Belgrade to face an in-form home side that will be confident of moving into first place. To do so Serbia must beat Russia for the first time in five meetings, although the trend of results has seen the Bears’ margin of victory diminish each time, with the latest edition September’s 21-20 victory in Naro-Fominsk.

“We are looking forward to the game against well-known and highly motivated opponents,” said Serbia coach Marko Janković. “The atmosphere in the squad is excellent; the players don’t feel at all fatigued or over-worked after two weeks of hard training and matches.”

Janković makes two changes to the squad that beat Germany a week ago. Mihailo Bošković (shoulder injury) and teenager Nemanja Petrović (unavailable) are replaced by Red Star’s Velibor Srećković, who played twice in last year’s fixtures, and debutant Filip Stošić.

”We’re under a different kind of pressure than against Germany,” continued Janković, who admitted to carrying the burden of Serbia’s domestic development on his shoulders last week. “We carried the favourite’s burden [against Germany] - and we carried it well. Now we have history against us and we haven’t forgotten two thrilling finishes in the most recent clashes. Nevertheless, we know that it is going to be a hard battle for every inch of the pitch; we have a big desire to win, but we have to keep calm during the game.”

The Serbs are expecting a sizeable crowd to the Makis Stadium, the site of Russia’s victory in the world cup qualifying match in 2011. Then, strike centre Petr Botnarash scored a hat-trick, but the powerful three-quarter is unavailable to what remains a tried and tested Russian squad, led by influential player-coach Eduard Ososkov.

"I think that the game is going to be very difficult,” admitted Ososkov. “It will be intense and physical for both sides. Serbia is the most physically powerful and highly motivated team in the Euro Shield. They have had a good training program including trial matches and the big score against Germany will only add to their optimism. We expect them to attack us from the very beginning of the match.”

Russia’s preparation was hampered by the cancellation of their Moscow Region-Moscow match due to a facility issue, but the championship has started, prefaced by a Moscow 9s championship and the national squad played a trial match against a student XIII. Moscow State University forward Victor Tolstov was a late withdrawal from the squad on Thursday, having failed to recover from an injury. He is replaced by Vereya debutant KirillNechaev.

Ososkov, though, is already looking to the future: “We plan to have new players in August against Germany to start preparation for next two-year period". Whether they enter that next cycle in first place could largely depend on Saturday's result.

Pictured: Three-quarter Igor Chuprin leads Russia with four tries in the competition.

SERBIA 20-MAN SQUAD
Miloš Zogović (Car Lazar), Mirko Božović, Stefan Nedeljković, Stevan Stevanović, Dalibor Vukanović (Dorćol), Marko Ćuk, Velibor Srećković, Radovan Tajsić (Military Academy), Marko Milenković (Niš), Igor Vratnjan (Podbara), Nemanja Božić, Mile Podkoljnjak (Radnički Nova Pazova), Miloš Ćalić, Vladislav Dedić, Vojislav Dedić, Ivan Djordjević, Vladica Nikolić, Nebojša Živanović (Red Star Belgrade), Strahinja Jevtić, Filip Stošić (Soko Vranje)

RUSSIA 18-MAN SQUAD
Sergey Beliavskiy, Alexey Mikhaylov, Sergey Zuev (MGPU), Dmitriy Bratko, Igor Chuprin, Vadim Fedchuk (Storm), Grigory Esin (St Petersburg), Rustam Bulanov, Sergey Gaponov, Anatoly Grigorev, Sergey Konstantinov, Aleksandr Lysokon (c), Kirill Nechaev, Alexey Nikolaev, Eduard Ososkov, Andrey Sevostianov, Maksim Suchkov, Vladimir Vlasyuk (Vereya Bears)