Player-coach Jen Wilson says Canterbury Ladies will embrace their underdog tag when they face Dutch giants SCHC in their opening EuroHockey Club Champions Cup match on Good Friday.

On Thursday the city club head to Holland to face the host club – packed full of Dutch and German internationals – in Bilthoven, near Utrecht, at 4.15pm (BST) the following day.

Wilson – who led Canterbury to top-spot in the Investec National Premier Division in 2013/14 to qualify for Europe – said: “We qualified over a year ago and it’s taken a long time to come around but now it’s here ,it’s exciting.” A win in their opening game would secure a Saturday (2.15pm) clash with the winners of the clash between Germans KTHC Stadion Rot-Weiss Koln and Irish team UCD.

Defeat would mean a Sunday (noon) showdown with the losers of the other clash, with the remaining classification games to be held on Monday.

Wilson admitted: “With the format the way it is, it’s difficult to set targets for a finish – our focus will be on performance.

“If you win your first game, it guarantees you finish in the top four. If you lose, then you can’t finish higher than fifth overall.

“You actually have to win more games to finish fifth than to finish fourth.

“The format is brutal in that sense but it provides every team with the same opportunity.” Leicester’s promotion to the top flight of European hockey last year means that Canterbury go in as the eighth seed and Wilson accepted: “It’s going to be tough as we go in with a low ranking and we’re up against the top-ranked Dutch team who are also the hosts.

“They will want to go on and win the tournament. There is a lot of pressure on them.

“We are definitely underdogs, it’s there in black and white with our ranking but if we play as we are capable of, then who knows what might happen?

“In the first game you want to give a good account of yourselves. Each match is an opportunity for our players, particularly our young players, to pit themselves against some of the best players in the world.

“They have three or four senior Dutch internationals and a German forward. They are experienced and fast – we want to show them respect but don’t want to go over the edge.

“We need to focus on ourselves and do what we do well, not change too much but we have to be aware of their threats.”

She added: “We have got key international and past international players too, plus some talented young players but they will probably know less about us than we know about them.”

Canterbury squad: Fagg, Smith, Grace, Clewlow, Barnes, Rowe, Neal, Triggs, Turner, Townsend, Chamberlain, Wilson, Kerly, Brett, Lloyd, Baker, Young, Wise. Travelling reserves: Brown, Mears.