By Leipziger
November 26 2010

Tomorrow sees the Falcons travel into the tiger-pit to take on champions Leicester in the Premiership.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, our record in Leicester is not strong, with only one win and one draw to show for our professional visits.

But with the Tigers missing internationals and languishing (by their standards) in fifth place in the table, this weekend represents a half-decent chance for us to get a first away win over the champions since December 1997.

That draw in 2005 was an epic evening that saw Andy Goode and Andy Long sin-binned, a late tackle on Jonny Wilkinson unpunished and Leicester steal a draw when the conversion of James Hamilton’s second-half try was incorrectly given as good by the touch-judges.  A Robbie Morris score had given the Falcons the lead.

Since then we’ve had four successive losses, culminating in a 15-6 defeat last September in the first game in front of the huge CAT Stand.  A tryless match was won by five Jeremy Staunton penalties to two from Rob Miller.

Last weekend Leicester hauled themselves up to third place in the table as six penalties from Billy Twelvetrees gave the Midlanders an 18-13 win over Harlequins at Welford Road.  Subsequent results saw Saracens and Gloucester go back into the top four, but none are troubling pace-setters Northampton and London Irish at the moment.

Leicester have only won four of their eight Premiership fixtures this season, surely a crisis for a club of their standing.  I’m sure they aren’t panicking though.  2010/11 began for the Tiggers at Franklin’s Gardens where Northampton were the victors in a local derby, before Exeter gave the champions a real scare at Welford Road, leading 16-27 in the second half before Scott Hamilton and Dan Hipkiss put Leicester ahead, and a penalty try broke the Chiefs’ hearts by denying them a bonus point, winning one for the home side in the bargain.

Since then Leicester have beaten Leeds, Bath and Harlequins at home in the league, while losing at Wasps, Saracens and Gloucester.  Quins did leave Welford Road with a win in the LV= Cup earlier this month, a few days before Australia did the same in a friendly in front of over 20,000 people, our hosts’ largest crowd of the season.

I’m not going to go into details about Leicester’s squad as it’s packed with star names, even without the England absentees of Toby Flood, Ben Youngs, Tom Croft and Dan Cole (and Lewis Moody if you believe the BBC – OK, it’s been changed now) there are plenty of other talents we need to be wary of.

Geoff Parling will not be playing after suffering knee ligament damage just a minute after coming off the bench in the Tigers’ last match, and while his fellow former Falcon Ben Woods started the season in the team he is suffering a scaphoid injury.  South African-born back rower Ben Pienaar has also suffered an Achilles injury.

Alongside the England quartet, Martin Castrogiovanni starts for Italy against Fiji at Modena’s Stadio Alberto Braglia, a match refereed by our own Dave Pearson, and three Tiggers are in the Argentina 22 to take on Ireland tomorrow.  There were rumours that Geordan Murphy may have been called up for the home side for the Dublin match too, and since he isn’t playing in our match tomorrow it is reasonable to assume he is in the Ireland squad.

The following team played in the league win over Harlequins: Geordan Murphy, Scott Hamilton, Matt Smith, Anthony Allen, Manu Tuilagi, Billy Twelvetrees, James Grindal, Pete Bucknall, George Chuter, Julian White, Ed Slater (Geoff Parling (Steve Mafi)), George Skivington, Thomas Waldrom, Craig Newby, Jordan Crane.

Anthony Allen was a late call-up by England coach Martin Johnson this week but was released yesterday, this possibly achieving nothing but disrupting Leicester’s preparation for tomorrow as happened with Jamie Noon for us back in the mid-noughties.

Tane Tu’ipulotu makes his first start of the season in the Falcons team (P.S. isn’t that a fantastic photo?), with Gcobani Bobo moving to the wing.  Our hooking crisis means Kieran Brookes starts in the number two shirt between Grant Shiells and Micky Ward.  Although our front row could be stronger, I think this is a decent team that should make life difficult for the home side tomorrow:

15 Jeremy Manning

14 Luke Fielden

13 Tane Tu’ipulotu

12 Luke Eves

11 Gcobani Bobo

10 Jimmy Gopperth

9 Micky Young

1 Grant Shiells

2 Kieran Brookes

3 Micky Ward

4c James Hudson

5 Tim Swinson

6 Brent Wilson

7 Redford Pennycook

8 Ally Hogg

16 Sean Crombie

17 Darren Fearn

18 James Hall (presumably)

19 Glen Townson

20 Will Welch

21 Chris Pilgrim

22 Michael Tait

23 Tom Catterick

Leicester have former Falcons James Grindal and Craig Newby in the starting lineup, and Allen is playing at Welford Road rather than Twickenham alongside fellow England internationals George Chuter, Julian White, Louis Deacon and the Tiggers captain Jordan Crane:

15 Scott Hamilton
14 Lee Robinson
13 Matt Smith
12 Anthony Allen
11 Manu Tuilagi
10 Billy Twelvetrees
9 James Grindal
1 Peter Bucknall
2 George Chuter
3 Julian White
4 Louis Deacon
5 George Skivington
6 Thomas Waldrom
7 Craig Newby
8c Jordan Crane

16 Rob Hawkins
17 Jonny Harris
18 Ryan Bower
19 Ed Slater
20 Steve Mafi
21 Jason Spice
22 George Ford
23 Andy Forsyth