European Challenge CupNewcastle Falcons are leaving little to chance as they swoop into Galway's Sportsground tomorrow night to meet Connacht in their European Challenge Cup match.
All Black prop Carl Hayman will make his first start in a Newcastle shirt, having come on last week from the bench, while England talisman Jonny Wilkinson, who also played four days ago, has been selected at outhalf to add some international glamour to the tie.
Hayman forms part of a new look frontrow as fellow All Black Joe McDonnell and hooker Andy Long come into the side. Hayman played 40 minutes last week against Wasps, having been in the country for just four days and having trained only once with the squad.
"I thought he made a good contribution even in those circumstances and with the jet lag now out of his system and a good week's training under his belt we look forward to see how things go," observed director of rugby John Fletcher.
Newcastle will try to shamelessly exploit the set pieces with Fletcher pointing to that area as one in which the Falcons have been particularly strong.
"Over 160 minutes against Wasps, we lost only one lineout, we scrummaged well for most of the time and we now have a solid platform in that area. Clearly there are improvements to be made in our game but we are making progress," he said.
Outside Wilkinson are a brace of other celebrated England players, Toby Flood and Jamie Noon, in a backline that would hope to trouble Connacht. But having lost to Wasps in last weekend's meeting, Newcastle are not arriving in the west as swollen with confidence as they would have liked.
"Connacht are a good side that beat a Glasgow team with 14 internationals last weekend, so we are giving them the respect they deserve," added Fletcher.
"They won that Glasgow game by four points but it could have been more and then they ran a star-studded Leinster team very close a couple of weeks ago. We've watched a lot of them on videos and we know that not a lot of teams go to Ireland and win in European competition."
Michael Bradley will meet Newcastle's threat with a mixture of feelings. Last week's win against Glasgow will have raised spirits following their poor performance against Ulster in the Magners Celtic League the previous week.
But the 23-year-old, Danny Riordan is back to full fitness. Riordan had to withdraw from the squad for last week's Celtic League game due to a quad muscle injury. He will be hoping to add to the hat-trick of tries he scored in Connacht's last European outing - their 75-8 thrashing of Spanish side Cetransa El Salvador in Galway last month. Riordan has an impressive strike rate of seven tries in his last seven starts in Europe.
Bradley will announce his team and replacements today. He has several interesting selection issues to iron out, particularly at half-back where Andy Dunne and Conor O'Loughlin could retain their places ahead of Tim Donnelly and Conor McPhillips.
CONNACHT (squad): Mel Deane, Tim Donnelly, Gavin Duffy, Andy Dunne, Conor McPhillips, Matt Mostyn, Conor O'Loughlin, Danny Riordan, Ofisa Treviranus, Aidan Wynne, Darren Yapp, Andrew Farley (capt), Adrian Flavin, John Fogarty, David Gannon, Ronan Loughney, Michael McCarthy, Robbie Morris, John Muldoon, Johnny O'Connor, Ray Ofisa, Michael Swift, Brett Wilkinson.
NEWCASTLE : M Tait; T May, J Noon, T Flood, J Rudd; J Wilkinson, H Charlton; J McDonnell, A Long, C Hayman, G Parling, M Sorenson, B Wilson, B Woods, P Dowson. Replacements: M Thompson, M Ward, S Tomes, R Winter, L Dickson, S Jones, T Visser.
