THE prospect of running out at Twickenham may still be a long way off, but Swindon scrum-half Connal Knott is hoping to take the first step towards HQ tomorrow.

Knott’s good form for the Greenbridge Road side this season have earned him a call-up to the Dorset & Wilts side for their opening County Championship clash of the season against Berkshire at Wootton Bassett, in which he will be joined by Swindon teammates Mike Thompson and Gary Williamson.

The scrum-half, who has played for the twin counties during the last two seasons, admitted he was pleased to be back behind the pack, having also spent time on the wing this season, and is looking forward to get the new campaign underway.

“I’ve played county rugby before and it’s always a good thing because it feels really special,” he said.

“It’s been an up-and-down season for me but to be recognised at the end of it is a good thing. I’ve played out of position a bit this season but scrum-half is my position and that’s where I feel most comfortable.

“We trained on Wednesday night and it was a good group of lads with some good players in there, which is really good for the county.

“You can’t do a great deal in only two training sessions but the quality of player is there and you don’t need to teach them how to play rugby. We’re going out there to win and it’s pretty important we do. They don’t know what we’ve got and we don’t know what they’ve got so it could be a really interesting game.

“It’s early days but we did talk about Twickenham at training, that’s our top goal, but we’ll have to see what happens.”

Entry to tomorrow’s game costs £2, with the money raised going towards the Joseph Landon Foundation - a cause close to the hearts of all the Dorset & Wilts players.

“Joseph is the son of our physio, Ian, and he’s in a bit of a bad way after an accident,” Knott said.

“It’s great we are able to support a cause like that and hopefully plenty of people are able to come to help us raise as much money as possible.”