The surging but weary Waratahs are preparing to take the big Lions pack on up front in Saturday's Super 14 clash at Sydney Football Stadium.

The last placed Lions have won only one game, but Waratahs players and coaches have plenty of respect for their big forwards.

"Watching their front row, it's going to be a real tough battle because they've exposed quite a few scrums in the front end of the season," NSW hooker Tatafu Polota-Nau said.

"If we get that scrum base right, then hopefully we can control them."

Forwards coach Steve Tuynman believes his pack were more than capable of taking on and beating the Lions eight.

"Their set piece is actually quite good, they might be 14th but if you have a look at their game they play some good football and they like to move the ball around," Tuynman said.

"I think we've got to take them on up front, that's what we will do, our guys are very capable of doing that and they've been doing that very well.

"We will look to try and work the set piece.

"I think we're going pretty well at set piece. Each week we go out there and pretty much come out on top of the opposition.

"Last week against the Force, our scrum was very good, but in saying that it wasn't up to our standards."

Tuynman said the biggest thing for the Waratahs over the next two weeks heading into their final stretch of three away games was managing their training work load, especially after the torrid clash with the Force.

"We've got to be conscious of just how much time we spend on our feet, we are still virtually in recovery mode at this stage," Tuynman said.

The Waratahs' two major injury concerns from the weekend, skipper and flanker Phil Waugh and centre Tom Carter, both trained on Tuesday.

Tuynman was very conscious that everyone expected the Waratahs to win this weekend, but he and the players stressed the Waratahs wouldn't dismiss the lowly placed Lions and pointed to their recent struggle to beat the Cheetahs, who were winless at the time.

"I don't think we're going to take them lightly at all," NSW fullback Sam Norton-Knight said.

He pointed out NSW had a very different run home to previous years with their South African leg at the end rather than the beginning of the season, followed by a trip to Queensland.

Tuynman stressed NSW needed to set themselves up for that testing run of away fixtures by winning their final two home games against the Lions and the highly placed Sharks over the next two weeks.

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