Trooper Taylor didn’t really want to get in Nick Fairley’s way. He just felt he had to.

“It’s like going into the pen with a tiger,” Taylor said. “You really don’t want to go in there and grab him, but you know if somebody doesn’t, you have to save him.

“I tried to calm him down and make sure he knew it was me first so he didn’t punch me. Then I tried to ward him off the field.”

Taylor used any strength he could muster to try to keep the 6-foot-4, 295-pound Fairley from re-entering one in a series of limited skirmishes that had broken out toward the end of last year’s Auburn-Georgia game — confrontations that led to the ejections of defensive linemen Mike Blanc and Michael Goggans and their subsequent suspensions from the first half of the next game.

Which just so happened to be the Iron Bowl.

“I wanted him to play in the Iron Bowl. I didn’t want him to miss the next one,” Taylor said. “At that time at that point of the year, they were labeling Nick as a dirty player. I knew they’d be watching him a little bit harder. He was the first one I thought about and the first one I went to.”

The fighting at the end of Auburn’s 49-31 win over the Bulldogs last year capped off a game that had been tense and chippy throughout, one that included 162 penalty yards and 11 personal fouls.

But, even with the two rivals’ histories, Auburn players don’t expect there to be any problems when the No. 20 Tigers (6-3, 4-2 SEC) travel to take on the No. 15 Bulldogs (7-2, 5-1) on Saturday at 2:30 p.m.

“That’s the way it is. It’s Georgia and Auburn,” said defensive tackle Jeffrey Whitaker, a Warner Robins, Ga., native. “When you’ve got a pretty good offensive line, who don’t mind hitting you in the mouth and you don’t mind returning the favors, there are going to be some shots. There’s going to be a little talking here and there.

“We’re going to respect the game. We’re going to play until the whistle blows.”

The two teams in the “Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry” have met 114 times since 1892, and they’re only separated by 38 points throughout all of those meetings.

Add in the fact that their campuses are only about three hours apart and it makes for a sense of familiarity that also allows things to get heated every now and then.

Like they did last year.

“I wouldn’t say there’s a feud between these two teams, but when we get out there between those lines, we want to win,” Eguae said. “They want to win for Georgia and we want to win for Auburn.

“As a group, we’ve got to control our emotions.”

Last year, Auburn played the part of the favorite, a win away from clinching the SEC West title and with a spot in the national championship game on the line, and Georgia was trying to spoil its party.

The roles are reversed this year, with the Bulldogs needing only one win to clinch the SEC East and a December trip to the Georgia Dome.

Who better to spoil Georgia’s plans than its oldest rival?

“We ain’t caught up in that, man,” linebacker Eltoro Freeman said. “We’re just trying to win every game. We’re just trying to finish out November 3-0.”

While Georgia’s got a lot on the line, Auburn is also in dire need of a win to jockey for bowl position.

With Samford a very probable win and alabama a probable loss, the Georgia result could mean the difference between 8-4 and 7-5 for the Tigers, which could in turn mean the difference between a Cotton Bowl jaunt and making a trip of their own to the Georgia Dome: for the Chick-Fil-A Bowl.

There’s pride — not to mention considerable bragging rights — still out there to claim for the Tigers.

“Any time you play at Auburn, you’re going to be known for what you did in November,” Eguae said. “That’s why we do the hard workouts in the spring. That’s why we put so much time in the summer in the offseason, for November.

“That’s what you’re going to remember.”