The New Saints confident of causing an upset

The New Saints flew out to Sweden last night vowing they will not just be making up the numbers in their Champions League return at fancied Helsingborgs IF.

Buoyed by their excellent 0-0 draw in the first leg at Park Hall, head coach Carl Darlington believes Wednesday night's tie is still very much alive.

And he is confident the Saints will adjust to playing on grass for the first time at Helsingborgs' Olympia stadium, despite spending most of the pre-season on their artificial surface.

"We've shown in the Welsh Premier League that we can play just as well on grass and some of our better performances have come away from home," he said.

"We trained on a grass pitch at Carden Park on Sunday, it's well kept with short grass which is similar to what we expect to be playing on in Sweden so we have prepared as well as we can.

"All the lads have had a rest, we didn't risk them against Telford in the Shropshire Senior Cup apart from Chris Seargeant, Chris Jones and Sam Finley who didn't play the full 90 minutes against Helsingborgs.

"We know it's going to be tough, away legs in Europe are always difficult to win.

"But we can go there with belief and confidence after the way we played in the first leg. Everyone's looking forward to the challenge."

If they do prevail, the Saints will face the winners of the tie involving the unseeded duo FK Buducnost of Montenegro or WKS Slask Wroclaw of Poland, the latter holding a two-goal lead from their first leg.

The players flew out at 7pm last night from Manchester airport, taking a 90-minute flight to Copenhagen before travelling an hour to their base in Helsingborgs.

They will train on the Olympia pitch tonight to acclimatise to the surroundings.

A special edition of Sgorio on S4C will broadcast highlights of The New Saints' clash at Helsingborgs IF.

The programme will be broadcast at 10.30pm.