Visser won’t face his Edinburgh pals
TIM VISSER is out of Harlequins’ Challenge Cup match with Edinburgh tomorrow after sustaining a knee injury. The Scotland wing was set to feature for the Londoners against his former side at Murrayfield but the problem flared up again yesterday morning. While Scottish fans will miss out on seeing one of their Test stars in action, it will be a timely boost for the capital side as Visser is in good form, having scored twice against Stade Francais last Thursday. Quins director of rugby John Kingston said: ‘He had a knock on his knee in the summer and then had a bit of a re-occurrence in the game last week. ‘He probably could have played but we thought it was best to rest him up and get him fresh and ready to go for us next week.’ Apart from Visser, the Aviva Premiership side will be coming to Scotland fully loaded, with England scrum-half Danny Care and 35-year-old fly-half Nick Evans both back from knocks and set to feature. Welsh centre Jamie Roberts and former Australia captain James Horwill are set to start, too, alongside England internationals Chris Robshaw, Mike Brown and Joe Marler. The last time the latter three played at Murrayfield was Eddie Jones’ first game in charge of England when they won 15-9 on the way to a Six Nations Grand Slam. With autumn Tests less than a month away, Quins’ English contingent will be eager to impress in Europe. As an English team at Murrayfield, Kingston knows there will be a target on Harlequins’ heads — but he will use that to fire up his team. ‘I have made it clear to the players that, even though some of them are Welsh, Australian, or other nationalities other than English, when they step on the field they are playing for Harlequins,’ he said. ‘We are an English team and Scotland will want to get one over on England. ‘There’s that national pride attitude and it will be no different on Saturday.’ Both sides recorded big wins last week — Quins beat Stade Francais 43-21 and Edinburgh beat Timisoara Saracens 59-17, so whoever wins will take control of Pool 5. And Kingston is targeting winning the Challenge Cup to avenge last year’s final defeat to Montpellier. ‘The bottom line is that it’s a European competition,’ he added. ‘We are taking this tournament very seriously. ‘We will reference again the hurt we felt in May from Lyon. We want to channel that into trying to win a trophy this year.’ Meanwhile, Scotland lock Ben Toolis is expected to lead out Edinburgh tomorrow on his 50th appearance for the club. And the 24-year-old admits he is surprised to have reached the milestone after swapping Australian volleyball for Scottish rugby less than four years ago. Toolis and twin Alex were snapped up as part of a global scouting project seeking Scots-qualified players. While Alex has returned to Australia, and now plays in Melbourne, Ben has become part of the Edinburgh firmament. ‘I feel exactly the same as when I got my first cap,’ he said. ‘When I first got here, I thought it would be quite hard to get game time so I never thought I’d get this far. I was coming for two years and thought if it didn’t work out I might move on, or back to Oz. But it’s panned out pretty well.’