Tigers vs Falcons

[Epaminondas Pules]

Newcastle Falcons team v Leicester Tigers (Saturday, 3.05pm, Mattioli Woods Welford Road, live on Discovery+)

15 Elliott Obatoyinbo, 14 Ben Redshaw, 13 Alex Hearle, 12 Sammy Arnold, 11 Max Pepper, 10 Brett Connon, 9 Sam Stuart; 1 Murray McCallum, 2 Jamie Blamire (captain), 3 Luan de Bruin, 4 John Hawkins, 5 Sebastian de Chaves, 6 Cameron Neild, 7 Tom Gordon, 8 Freddie Lockwood.

Replacements: 16 Bryan Byrne, 17 Micky Rewcastle, 18 Callum Hancock, 19 Oscar Usher, 20 Ollie Leatherbarrow, 21 Joe Davis, 22 Oli Spencer, 23 Louis Brown.

Not available for selection: Eduardo Bello, Adam Brocklebank, Tim Cardall, Callum Chick, Max Clark, Connor Doherty, Ollie Fletcher, John Kelly, Kiran McDonald, Jacob Oliver, Richard Palframan, Ben Stevenson, Philip van der Walt, Harrison Wood.


STARTING XV

15 Freddie Steward [108]
14 Josh Bassett [25]
13 Solomone Kata [41]
12 Joseph Woodward [30]
11 Ollie Hassell-Collins [45]
10 Handré Pollard [51]
9 Ben Youngs [334]
1 Nicky Smith [21]
2 Julián Montoya (c) [75]
3 Dan Cole [340]
4 Cameron Henderson [62]
5 Ollie Chessum [65]
6 Hanro Liebenberg [129]
7 Tommy Reffell [135]
8 Olly Cracknell [63]

REPLACEMENTS

16 Charlie Clare [121]
17 James Cronin [47]
18 Joe Heyes [160]
19 Matt Rogerson [25]
20 Emeka Ilione [45]
21 Jack van Poortvliet [93]
22 Ben Volavola [8]
23 Mike Brown [32]

[Banquo]

nice for Youngs and Cole to start and get a great ovation coming on and going off.

[Epaminondas Pules]

nice for Youngs and Cole to start and get a great ovation coming on and going off.

Plus Pollard, Bassett and Montoya and then Brown to wave goodbye off the bench.

[Banquo]

nice for Youngs and Cole to start and get a great ovation coming on and going off.

Plus Pollard, Bassett and Montoya and then Brown to wave goodbye off the bench.

Jonny come latelys

[FKAS]

James Cronin also heading off at the end of the season.

You'd expect Cole, Youngs, Cronin, Pollard, Montoya and Shillcock all to appear in the home semi final which should be confirmed as long as we don't mess up today. Brown and Bassett unlikely to feature so a goodbye game for them.

[FKAS]

Dreadful game of rugby, very few highlights. Neither side looking any close to fluent in attack. Concerns for Tigers with JvP playing through discomfort late on.