Head coach Matt Sherratt will rest some of his international stars and blood his young players when Cardiff face Lyon in their opening game of the EPCR Challenge Cup on Saturday.

Cardiff’s Wales players have had a busy start to the season, with some playing every game of the opening block of fixtures before going straight into the Autumn Nations Series.

This weekend will allow them to have a well deserved break, and for Sherratt to give his squad and young players an opportunity to impress.

“It’s a little bit of a chance for us to freshen people up, and with our squad size, an opportunity to give some of the internationals a rest,” said Sherratt.

“People like Ben Thomas, Cam Winnett, Keiron Assiratti who have played a lot of rugby.

“I think they played all our six games to start the block so we’re going to give them a week off so a couple of youngsters get the chance.

“A couple of the squad players who have been involved but not started, so a little bit of rotation from the bench to start.”

Cardiff have won the Challenge Cup on two occasions and are targeting a hat-trick of wins in the competition.

“We have a lot of history in the cup competitions,” added Sherratt. “We’ve won this competition twice and I’d love to get a knockout game at the Arms Park, so that’s our mindset.”

With teams often making changes for the Challenge Cup, Cardiff have focused more on their cohesiveness rather than the opposition.

But whatever team Lyon put out on Saturday, Sherratt is certain it will be a tough challenge.

“What I’ve learnt from this competition, especially early on, is not really to worry too much about the opposition.

“If there’s any traits in terms of how they play, but not really being personnel based because they don’t know who we’re going to pick and we don’t know who they’re going to pick.

“It’s more about when you make changes, making sure that our changes are cohesive by the time we get to France. It’s usually 80-20 us to opposition but European weeks probably go another 10% so just 90% about us getting cohesive and then 10% worry about the opposition.

“But Lyon are a massive club aren’t they so whether they’re top of the top 14 or towards the bottom end they’ve still got a pretty useful squad so they’ll be a challenge.”

Sherratt is relishing the opportunity to play in Europe again after enjoying some memorable nights at the Arms Park in the past.

“We are not going to start worrying about the final but I would love to get a knockout game,” added Sherratt.

“Going back to when I was here against Pau and I know it wasn’t a knockout last year but the Bath game and the Sale game that marked Peter’s passing were all nights that I’ll remember for a long time, so it’d be great to be great to create another one of those.”