London Irish host Exeter Chiefs at the Brentford Community Stadium in what is set to be Irish’s biggest attendance since moving back to west London.
Sean O’Brien returns to the side at No.8 and talented winger Ben Loader is back in the starting XV.
Irish are without star winger Ollie Hassell-Collins who is unavailable due to being in the England Six Nations squad.
Ahead of the game, director of rugby Declan Kidney said: βWhenever you come up against Rob Baxter‘s Exeter Chiefs, you know it’s going to be a tough challenge.
βAlthough we managed to pick up a win at Sandy Park earlier in the season, that will now mean they have extra motivation for this weekend’s fixture.
βI know we are expecting a good crowd tomorrow and it is down to us to give them a performance to be proud of.β
Baxter’s Exeter are currently five points adrift of the final play-off berth and the Chiefs know they can ill afford to slip too far if they want to make a seventh straight final.
He said: βWe are kind of refocusing ourselves a little bit. We’ve not sat down this week and talked a huge amount about points or league positions, it’s been more about getting guys in the right frame of mind of just where we are. The reality is that for some of them they are almost still learning to be an Exeter Chief.
βA few of them have still had relatively little in an Exeter Chiefs shirt, so it’s about using every game as that maximal exposure to being an Exeter Chief and being a player who can play Premiership Rugby at a high level. Therefore, we have only really focused on making sure that we are trying to put the game on the field that we are comfortable with.β
Exeter are without England call ups Luke Cowan-Dickie, Jonny Hill, Jack Nowell, Sam Simmonds and Henry Slade for their trip to the capital. Additionally, Welsh flanker Christ Tshiunza is in isolation after testing positive for Covid-19.
However, the Scottish trio of Jonny Gray, Stuart Hogg and Sam Skinner are all available for the final time before the start of the Six Nations next weekend.
Written by Ben Jaycock
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