A week after playing in some of the hottest conditions of his career, Tom Wood returns to the scene of the coldest this Sunday as Worcester Warriors visit Bucuresti Oaks in the European Challenge Cup.

The young flanker was part of the side that opened their campaign to go one better than last year’s lost final, with a resounding 55-6 victory in Petrarca Padova, a game that featured a hat-trick for former Wallaby Chris Latham.

The Australian clearly found the Italian climate to his liking. In temperatures nearing 30 degrees he bagged his first tries as a Worcester player while Wood and his colleagues in the pack ended a sapping afternoon not so much dizzy at the beauty of their team’s rugby, as the heat.

“With 20 minutes to go my eyes were starting to get blurry,” Wood said. “We played a really fast style, there was a lot of ball in play time and a lot of end to end kicking. As forwards we were running up and down as though we were treading water.”

Which brings us back to Bucuresti. When Warriors rolled up in Romania last November they were plunged into conditions best described as an Arctic paddy-field. Even though they battled to an 18-8 win, no one at Sixways recalls the occasion with any affection.

Indeed they actually were treading water. “It was definitely – by far and away – the coldest game I have played in professionally, said Wood. “A lot of the boys never want to go through that again if they can help it, we tried everything we could to keep warm but nothing worked. There was about a foot of water on the pitch.

“Shane Drahm kicked and chased and has he slid to gather the ball he disappeared for a few seconds. We didn’t think he was coming back up.

“The first half was OK because you warm up and are fresh for the large part but after half time having stopped for ten minutes, having to motivate yourself to come back out was pretty tough. The backs were shivering and huddling together every break in play to try and get warm and the driving wind only made it worse.”

A rumour still does the rounds at Sixways that Thinus Delport, a good player but not one encumbered by world-class durability, actually asked to forsake his position at full back so that he could enjoy the relative warmth of the scrum.

Had he been allowed to do so Wood says it wouldn’t have made any difference.

“I knelt down for so many scrummages and breakdowns, my knees were blue and purple when I came off,” he said. “When I got in the shower afterwards, I couldn’t touch the water for chilblains.

“It was a dog-fight. Everyone’s hands were too cold to catch and pass, no one wanted to kick the ball because their feet were frozen. Every time we did kick there was no balance because of the water.

“It was just pick and go, scrapping around the ruck, dropped ball after dropped ball, scrum after scrum. It was a real gruelling battle against some big lads who were very aggressive on their home pitch.

“The tone was set for me when we went out to warm up before the game we walked past their gym and they were all power-lifting. They were all there in their vests pressing god knows what weight above their heads. They definitely used that strength to drive no more than a metre away from the rucks.”

As part of their preparations for this weekend, therefore, Worcester have not so much studied their opponents’ lineout calls and backs’ moves as the weather forecast.

Happily the outlook is considerably more benign than last time and that, Wood hopes, will play in to the visitors’ hands.

Although Latham is not likely to play due to a bruised hand, incisive wings Rico Gear and Miles Benjamin are almost certain to do so as Worcester look to cement their position at the top of pool three before the crucial trip to Bourgoin in early December.

A bonus-point victory in sunny Romania would be the perfect preparation for that.