Preview: Leicester Tigers v Newcastle Falcons

Manu Tuilagi, Brendon O’Connor and Mike Williams return from injury to claim places in the Leicester Tigers squad for Friday’s Premiership meeting with Newcastle Falcons.

Fit-again Tuilagi starts alongside Matt Toomua at centre, with O’Connor joining Luke Hamilton and Sione Kalamafoni – this season’s Players’ Player of the Year – in the back-row.

Williams is included among the replacements as he returns from injury. Ellis Genge will make his 50th Tigers appearance since his move from Bristol and he joins fellow internationals Tatafu Polota-Nau and Dan Cole in the front-row.

Ben Youngs reclaims his starting berth at scrum-half after making an appearance as a replacement against Northampton Saints a fortnight ago following his recovery from a knee injury.

Tigers’ head coach Matt O’Connor said: “We’ve had a number of players coming back from injury over the last few weeks and they have been training and preparing fully. It is good timing because the intensity of these last two rounds will require a real squad effort.

“This is a huge game and thankfully we’re at home and will have the fans at Welford Road to give us a bit of an edge. We now have to put in a performance worthy of getting the points we need.”

For Newcastle, fit-again flanker Mark Wilson captains the Falcons in Friday night’s crucial Premiership trip to Leicester.

Wilson will make his first start since the Premiership victory at Harlequins on February 24 after overcoming a hamstring injury as the fourth-placed Falcons travel to the fifth-placed Tigers determined to press home their claims on a semi-final spot.

The Cumbrian’s return comes as one of four changes from the team which started last Friday’s European Challenge Cup semi-final at Gloucester, with Ally Hogg replacing Ryan Burrows at Number eight in the only other alteration to the forward pack.

Former Tiger Vereniki Goneva returns on the right wing as Chris Harris moves infield to the centres – Sinoti Sinoti coming back on the other wing – as the Falcons strive for their first win at Welford Road since December 1997.

That match was the last of Dean Richards’ 314 competitive appearances for Leicester, the Falcons’ director of rugby saying ahead of Friday’s encounter: “They’ve got a full international front-row and a tasty backline, but we’ve got a good pack ourselves and a load of talent in the backs.

“It’s nicely poised when you look at the whole contest, and it should be an interesting game. I wouldn’t be going down there if I didn’t have the confidence that we could win, and it’s a massive opportunity for us.”

Confident his side can bounce back from last Friday’s European Challenge Cup semi-final defeat at Gloucester, Richards added: “We’ve sat down and picked it to pieces, and even that first passage of the game when we had the ball in hand for over two minutes we missed three blatant overlaps.

“That was just due to our own inaccuracy in terms of executing what we said we were going to do, and that was the most difficult thing to come to terms with. It wasn’t the fact we had lost, it was the fact we didn’t deliver what we’d said we were going to deliver.

“Enthusiasm isn’t enough at this level, you have to be accurate with it, and you can’t afford to go wildly off-script for periods of time. But we’ve put that to bed now, we’ve taken from it what we needed to take and it will be a different performance down at Leicester on Friday.”

Form: Leicester’s previous Premiership outing saw them go down to local rivals Northampton Saints 27-21, leaving them in fifth position in the table. Before that result, however, they had been in fine form after securing five successive victories, including an impressive 28-20 win against Saracens at Allianz Park. Newcastle have enjoyed a similarly excellent run and came back from their disappointing loss to Worcester Warriors by overturning Sale Sharks 35-30 at Kingston Park. Although they were defeated by Gloucester in the Challenge Cup semi-finals, they have emerged triumphant in five of their last six league games.

The teams:

Leicester: 15 Telusa Veainu, 14 Adam Thompstone, 13 Manu Tuilagi, 12 Matt Toomua, 11 Jonny May, 10 George Ford (c), 9 Ben Youngs, 8 Sione Kalamafoni, 7 Brendon O’Connor, 6 Luke Hamilton, 5 Graham Kitchener, 4 Mike Fitzgerald, 3 Dan Cole, 2 Tatafu Polota-Nau, 1 Ellis Genge
Replacements: 16 Tom Youngs, 17 Greg Bateman, 18 Logovi’i Mulipola, 19 Harry Wells, 20 Mike Williams, 21 Sam Harrison, 22 Mathew Tait, 23 Jonah Holmes

Newcastle: 15 Simon Hammersley, 14 Vereniki Goneva, 13 Chris Harris, 12 Josh Matavesi, 11 Sinoti Sinoti, 10 Joel Hodgson, 9 Michael Young, 8 Ally Hogg, 7 Gary Graham, 6 Mark Wilson (c), 5 Sean Robinson, 4 Calum Green, 3 Scott Wilson, 2 Scott Lawson, 1 Sam Lockwood
Replacements: 16 Santiago Socino, 17 Rob Vickers, 18 Trevor Davison, 19 Will Witty, 20 Ryan Burrows, 21 Sonatane Takulua, 22 Juan Pablo Socino, 23 Alex Tait

Date: Friday, April 27
Venue: Welford Road
Kick-off: 19:45 BST (18:45 GMT)
Referee: Luke Pearce
Assistant referees: Tim Wigglesworth, Adam Leal
TMO: Stuart Terheege