By Quinten Poulsen
September 9 2011

 Friday night rugby returns to The Stoop as Harlequins face Northampton Saints, both sides having won their opening fixture last week, Harlequins away to London Irish at Twickenham Stadium while Northampton beat Gloucester at home. 

London Irish proved stubborn opponents last weekend and despite the Harlequins defence falling asleep on a couple of occasions they took their tries well. However, Quins never looked in too much trouble as Nick Evans boot kept the scoreboard ticking over throughout the game, and with two tries from Johnston and Monye Quins recorded their first opening fixture win for three years.

Meanwhile at Franklin's Gardens on Sunday Northampton won a tight encounter with Gloucester in a game that could have easily gone the other way. The Saints are missing several of their star players thanks to the Rugby World Cup and while many commentators are crediting them with having better strength in depth than last season it remains to be seen if this is actually the case. The back three of Tonks, May and Cato is some way off that of Foden, Reihana and Ashton, but despite limited opportunities last season Tonks for one showed some very good flashes last week. Tom May has been around a long time now and while wing may not be his best position his experience will be valuable. Cato is a strong and elusive runner but could never truly nail down a starting place with Saracens and doubts remain about his defence.

One area where Northampton are back to full strength is in the centres, with Jon Clarke returning to partner his old pal Downey. Downey is one of the best inside centres in the league and is more than a match for most in both attack and defence; he may not be the most subtle of players but he sure is bloomin' effective. England Saxon Stephen Myler joins Welsh international scrum-half Martin Roberts to form a pretty decent halfback partnership. Myler has his critics but generally on his day he is a fine player who can control the game well and is a very dependable goalkicker. Up front Northampton rely on some more of their strength in depth in the shape of Academy youngster Alex Waller and the old veteran Andy Long, who join regular starter Brian Mujati in the front row. It's sometimes easy to forget that Long was capped by England as a 20-year-old 14 years ago. Some American bloke whose name sounds like a Pacific island starts in the second row and he's built like a brick outhouse. Thankfully for Northampton he doesn't run like one and from what little we've seen of him so far he looks very menacing and athletic and could prove to be a real handful this season. Also in the second row is Christian Day, who has proved himself to be first choice since almost day one when he moved two years ago from Sale. Phil Dowson takes over from the injured Roger Wilson at number eight and whilst Saints certainly miss Wilson, Dowson seems to be equally adept in each of the back row positions. Former hothead Calum Clark starts on the blindside while noob Ben Nutley will look to continue his very good start of last week on the open side.

The back row battle will be interesting and the Northampton boys will really fancy their chances particularly with Chris York starting at number eight in place of the very unfortunate Tom Guest. Overall the packs look fairly even that Quins appear to have an advantage in the backline, particularly at halfback and in the back three. Northampton's set piece is usually very good and even with their missing players the scrum and lineout should function pretty well. A good home crowd buoyed on by happy hour should be able to make home advantage tell, then, assuming our pack gets a little more possession than Northampton do, it should hopefully be enough for Nick Evans and co to create a narrow win. Northampton are not to be underestimated but with so many very high quality players missing this is a match Quins must win.