Quins bid for top-two finish

Published: Friday, 20. April, 2012 in category Leicester
Evans: Returns for Harlequins

Sam Smith retains his place on the left wing after last weekend's man-of-the-match performance, with Mike Brown and Ugo Monye in the back three.

Nick Evans returns at fly-half outside Danny Care at scrum-half. Jordan Turner-Hall and George Lowe will continue at centre in front of a sell-out crowd.

The starting pack remains unchanged from last week's victory over Wasps. Joe Marler, Rob Buchanan and James Johnston provide the front-row. Olly Kohn and George Robson remain in the second-row. Maurie Fa'asavalu continues at blindside alongside captain Chris Robshaw and Nick Easter at number eight.

The replacements see Aston Croall, Mark Lambert, Will Collier covering in the front-row. Tomas Vallejos and Tom Guest will looking to impact in the second and back-row respectively. Karl Dickson and Rory Clegg cover at half-back, while Ross Chisholm covers the remainder of the backline.

Full-back Geordan Murphy returns to lead out Leicester Tigers in the top-of-the-table encounter.

Skipper Murphy missed Leicester's bonus-point win at Northampton last weekend but is fit to resume at Quins in the only change to the starting line-up.

Lock Graham Kitchener comes in for Craig Newby among the replacements and Scott Hamilton provides cover in the backline.

"We've got a tough run-in but we started that with a win in a very difficult game at Northampton last weekend and now we go to Quins before the last round against Bath," said Tigers director of rugby Richard Cockerill.

"Harlequins have proved themselves over the course of a long season - they won at Welford Road, they beat Toulouse in Europe and they beat Saracens at Wembley just a few weeks ago, so they are still going well.

"We've been playing well too, we've got ourselves into a good position now and we are still going hard for a place in the semi-finals."