Lawrence Bird is backing Bermuda’s toughness to see them through against Mexico this weekend.The Island’s senior rugby team leave for South America today where they will play the hosts for the right to appear in the finals of the Caribbean Championships.While Bird said that his team needed to be wary of Mexico’s ability to hit them on the break, he expected Bermuda’s physicality to win the day.“I don’t think we’ve ever played them at 15s,” said Bird. “We watched the video of them playing against Cayman (in the previous round), and we’ve got a fair idea of what to expect. We’re hoping that our physicality will win the day, we have a very tough side.“They’re very, very dangerous on the counterattack, so we’ve got to be careful with that. They really won the game against Cayman through counterattacks, and throwing the ball around. Cayman looked tired towards the end in my opinion and they (Mexico) capitalised towards the end, and scored four very good tries in the second half.“We’ve got to be mindful of that, we’ve done some work tightening up our defence, because when Bahamas got the ball in open play we were found wanting quite frankly, so we’ve done a lot of work on that too.”As well as battling Mexico, Bermuda’s players will also have to deal with playing at a far higher altitude than they are used to. However, Bird said he and his coaches had told the players not to think about it.“You just don’t know how much it’s going to affect you. We’re going down a couple of days before to try and acclimatise somewhat, but, you know, it’s high, but it’s not too high.“We’ve actually decided to tell the guys, forget altitude, forget the conditions, forget this, forget that. If you’ve got a game plan, which we have, you’ve just got to execute it, and you’ll be fine.“We’re just focused on the game of rugby and beating the opposition, we’re not too worried about it.”Bermuda’s only concerns come from having a number of the squad, including Bird, who were unable to travel due to the disorganisation of organisers NACRA.With Tom Edwards among that number, backs coach Chris Naylor has been forced to step in at fly-half.“We’ve lost Tom Edwards as a result, who’s clearly a very talented player. For the most part the core guys are still available, we’ve got some new guys come in as a result.”In Bird’s absence Johann Oosthuizen will travel as head coach, with Naylor in a player/coach role, and Bill McNiven going as forwards coach.