Bristol hooker Mark Regan is relying on a few old friends to help him roll over London Irish tomorrow in the Guinness Premiership – the Horfield chimney stacks.

Bristol may have won the title European City of the Year, but Regan believes teams like London Irish, who enjoy the fancy surrounds of the Madejski Stadium in Reading and the high life in London, can often be intimidated by the slightly less glorious facilities of the Memorial Stadium and nearby area, something he relishes.

Regan confided that despite leaving the city to win trophies at Bath then Leeds he always wanted to return to the chimney stacks and help fight Bristol's cause.

"There's a lot of guys here who have been battling all their lives at the bottom of the table," he said.

"Luckily enough for me, I was able to go away to Bath. If you can't beat the best, you've got to join the best. But Bristol was a place I wanted to come back to and play.

"I know it's hard work here. We don't have the funding other clubs do, that's why we're looking for more. But we're a fighting bunch of lads and we don't like losing, full stop."

The Barbarians hooker revealed the feeling in the camp is good despite their battering last week against Gloucester which he aptly described as "a good shoeing".

The Kingsholm side won 39-10 but Regan is confident Bristol can return to winning ways against London Irish on Sunday.

"We've put a lot of wrongs right in training this week," said the 36-year-old.

Regan scored a try in the 2006 encounter between these sides at the Memorial Stadium, but the first-half lead he helped to engineer slipped away and the Exiles edged home 21-20. He is expecting another close-fought match, not least because of Bristol's current predicament.

"It's another game we desperately need to win," he said. "Obviously the table doesn't lie, the stats don't lie.

"London Irish are flying high in second place and we need a cracking performance and a loud Bristol crowd to overcome them.

"No one likes coming down here when they see the old chimney stacks. It's not exactly like London and there aren't nice buildings etcetera. It's a hard, hard place to come and play and we've got to make it a hostile environment."

Head coach Richard Hill has made only injury-enforced changes to his squad despite an outbreak of midweek flu. Redford Pennycook replaces Iain Grieve, who is waiting on scan results for the shoulder injury he suffered against Gloucester.

Hill has taken decided to switch his half-backs with Shaun Perry and Ed Barnes starting in place of Graeme Beveridge and Adrian Jarvis.

Bristol: D Lemi; L Robinson, N Brew, L Eves, T Arscott; E Barnes, S Perry; A Clarke, M Regan, D Crompton, R Winters, R Sidoli, A To'oala, J El Abd (capt), D Ward-Smith. Reps: S Linklater, P Bracken, M Sambucetti, R Pennycook, G Beveridge, A Jarvis, L Arscott.

London Irish: P Hewat; T Ojo, E Seveali'i, S Mapusua, S Tagicakibau; S Geraghty, P Hodgson; C Dermody, D Paice, T Lea'aetoa, B Casey (capt), K Roche, D Danaher, S Armitage, C Hala'ufia. Reps: D Murphy, J Buckland, A Corbisiero, G Johnson, R Thorpe, A Lalanne, C Gower.