Bedford Blues take to the road this weekend as they travel south to face Esher at Molesey Road.

The Blues may be enjoying a great run of victories at the moment, but director of rugby Mike Rayer will be taking nothing for granted as his team head out to face an Esher side which has lost five and drawn one in their last six games to be languishing in 11th spot.

Bedford picked up a 31-9 win against the Surrey side at Goldington Road earlier in the season, but Bedford know that the trip to Esher is never easy and they only have to look back to the 07/08 season when they went down 35-30 on a miserable Saturday evening just before Christmas.

But the Blues do head into the game with a nearly fully fit squad.

The only injury absentees are Ben Lewitt, who is just a couple of weeks away from a return following the ACL injury that has ruled him out since April, and Edd Thrower who has a back problem. James Pritchard is away on international duty with Canada who face Georgia on Saturday.

The fullback hit seven conversions and two penalties last weekend as the Canucks hammered Spain 60-22.

Looking ahead to the game Rayer said: “Things in the Championship are getting rather tasty at the moment and there is plenty of jostling for positions in the table.

“Esher may be in 11th, but they only need to string a couple of wins together and they can be right back in the mix and looking to finish in the top eight and I’m sure that is the message that Mike Schmid is giving his players.

“We know that we have to continue the good momentum that we have built up so far this season and work hard as a team to pick up what would be an important win.

“Picking up a five point win against Rotherham last week was very pleasing, but we had a long, hard look at ourselves on the DVD and I think that everyone agrees that our performance wasn’t as finely tuned as it could have been.

"The good thing about this league is that you get plenty of opportunity to keep working on aspects of your game every single week.”

Only five players stay in the same position that they started in against Rotherham last weekend as Rayer rings in the changes for the trip to Esher. Brendan Burke moves to fullback, Ollie Dodge switches from the wing to outside centre and Handre Schmidt comes in at 14.

Tom Bedford returns to the starting line-up with Ian Vass moving to the bench where he joins Will Chudley who is replace by Darryl Veenendaal.

In the pack Laurence Ovens, Chris Locke and Dan Seal replace Sam Walsh, Dan Richmond and Phil Boulton respectively while Sean Tomes starts in place of Alex Rae and Sacha Harding gets a deserved break with Will Fraser coming in at openside.

Starting line-up: 15. Brendan Burke 14. Handre Schmidt 13. Ollie Dodge 12. Tom Bedford 11. Duncan Taylor 10. Myles Dorrian *9. Darryl Veenendaal 1. Laurence Ovens 2. Chris Locke 3. Dan Seal 4. Paul Tupai 5. Sean Tomes 6. Gregor Gillanders 7. Will Fraser 8. Chris Goodman (c) Replacements: 16. Dan Richmond, 17. Phil Boulton, 18. Mike Howard, 19. Alex Rae, 20. Will Chudley, 21. Jake Sharp, 22. Ian Vass.