After Leinster did the double on the Scarlets in the Heineken Cup in December, Nigel Davies’ side will be looking to put the record straight. The Scarlets beat the European Champions 18-16 in the opening Magners League game of the season back in early September at Parc y Scarlets.
Scrum half Martin Roberts starts with the exciting centre partnership of Jonathan Davies and Regan King reunited for the first time in a year. King starts in his second game for the region after returning from a long-term hamstring injury.
Scarlets Head Coach Nigel Davies has given impressive Llanelli full-back Dan Newton his first opportunity to start for the region with Daniel Evans moving from full-back to the wing.
Scarlets Head Coach Nigel Davies said: “Leinster are a strong squad and have depth, even without a number of their internationals and that’s what you need to be successful as a team. It will be a big challenge for us but we’ll look forward to a good game out there, we’ve been going pretty well in the past month.
“If you look at our season so far considering where we have come from, we can been reasonably happy with what we achieved, as runners-up in our group in the Heineken Cup and joint top of the LV=Cup pool. We need to concentrate on results in the Magners League now, we’ve come close a number of times in our Magners games, shown by the number of losing bonus points we’ve secured. We now have to turn those performances into results.
Scarlets 15 Dan Newton, 14 Daniel Evans, 13 Regan King, 12 Jon Davies 11 Andy Fenby, 10 Rhys Priestland, 9 Martin Roberts, 1 Iestyn Thomas, 2 Ken Owens, 3 Deacon Manu, 4 Dominic Day, 5 Damian Welch, 6 Rob McCusker, 7 Johnathan Edwards 8 David Lyons (capt).
Replacements: 16 Phil John, 17 Emyr Phillips, 18 Rhys Thomas, 19 Vernon Cooper, 20 Josh Turnbull , 21 Tavis Knoyle, 22 Gareth Maule
