Northampton v Harlequins
4pm BT Sport 3
Wing George North, No8 Louis Picamoles and flanker Tom Wood are back for Northampton. Harry Mallinder is at fly-half in place of the injured JJ Hanrahan. For Harlequins, Danny Care has a stomach injury. Karl Dickson and Nick Evans make their final Premiership appearances.
When Marcos Ayerza arrived at Leicester in 2006, he was quickly taken under the wing of Graham Rowntree, a founder member of the ABC club alongside Richard Cockerill and Darren Garforth.
Rowntree was coming to the end of a 17-year playing career and recognised that Ayerza, who had only signed a short-term deal, was destined to be his long-term successor in the Tigers No 1 shirt. “He told me how much history this shirt had and how I needed to look after it and respect it for a long time,” Ayerza said.
Eleven years later Ayerza bestrode the Welford Road pitch for the final time after last Saturday’s victory against Sale Sharks as arguably the greatest loosehead of the Premiership era. A back injury had forced Ayerza into premature retirement and he too had anointed his heir in Ellis Genge. At first glance there may not seem to be much in common between the men from Buenos Aires and Bristol, but Ayerza recognised that devil that all elite props need to possess.
“He has the same hunger,” Ayerza said. “His progress at scrum time and elsewhere is immense. The scary part is he is nowhere near his ceiling at 22. I always believe the front five is the personality of the team so you have to be dominant, you have to be aggressive, you have to be marking your territory. He is adding to his game but that personality, that nastiness and physicality is there.”
It is those same qualities that persuaded England head coach Eddie Jones to take Genge to Australia last summer having played only 121 minutes of Premiership rugby after joining Leicester from Bristol. Next month he travels with England to Argentina, a tour that tends to produce more than its share of flashpoints.
Genge will be right at home. There was a brilliant photograph from the Sale game where an incandescent Mike Phillips, a veteran of 99 Tests, was set to confront Genge, who is never short of a word or two.
“I just ask them how their Tuesday was,” Genge said. “I can’t control that – I couldn’t tell you half the stuff I say and they would probably say that as well because with this horrible south-west accent they probably don’t understand me either. I do have a he is trying to study a board at the club’s Oval Park training ground which lists players such as Ayerza and Rowntree with more than 200 appearances for the club.
“I actually enjoy learning about that as I want to put my name up there one day,” Genge said. “To see names of some of the ABC club up there is exciting to be part of that.”
Today Leicester travel to Worcester needing just a point to maintain their record of always qualifying for the Premiership play-offs. “We’re Leicester Tigers; we don’t go into a game trying to get a point,” Genge said. “We’re going there for five.”
Those words could have come straight from the mouth of Rowntree. Certainly Ayerza is convinced that the torch passed to him by Rowntree is in safe hands.
“The one thing that frustrates me a lot is seeing young talent treating the scrum as just another part of the game,” Ayerza said. “They prefer to focus on their ball-carrying where the TV commentator praises you, but care less about cleaning rucks and the invisible work in the scrum. To have someone so young who has that same love of the scrum, trying to push and be dominant every time is so rewarding.”