Champions Cup, Round of 16 - teams and prediction

Yesterday at 02:33 PM

FRIDAY PREVIEW: Despite a difficult couple of weeks, Northampton Saints will not be weighed down by the occasion against Clermont, according to centre Fraser Dingwall.

Dingwall will once again be captaining the men in black, green and gold in the absence of injured skipper George Furbank for the visit of Les Jaunards to cinch Stadium at Franklin's Gardens.

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At stake is a place in the quarterfinals of the Champions Cup, with Saints being the only Premiership club to have a home tie in the last 16 of European rugby's premier club competition.

Those stakes have been raised by recent defeats against Leicester Tigers and Sale Sharks, damaging the prospects of them having the chance to defend their Premiership title in this season's play-offs.

Where Saints can draw inspiration from is their run to the semifinals of last year's Champions Cup, which included a memorable win over Munster at the Gardens at the same stage in which they are competing on Friday.

Dingwall, however, insists the build-up has been business as usual, saying: "We haven't really touched on the fact that it's a huge game all that much because everyone's aware that a European knock-out is always big.

"We haven't actually tried to push that hard [on how big the game is], it's more around how excited we can be for the opportunity we've got.

"We worked really hard in the group stages to give ourselves the opportunity to have a last-16 tie at home so to then play Clermont, who we haven't played for a number of years.

"It will be the first time a lot of the lads have played against those guys, just sets itself up to be a really cool, exciting prospect.

"That hopefully drives a lot of the mental side of it to get a good performance out there."

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Northampton Saints v Clermont

(Franklin's Gardens, Northampton - Kick-off: 20.00; 21.00 French time; 19.00 GMT)

Prediction 

@rugby365com:Northampton Saints by eight points

Teams

Northampton Saints: 15 James Ramm, 14 Tommy Freeman, 13 Burger Odendaal, 12 Fraser Dingwall (captain), 11 George Hendy, 10 Fin Smith, 9 Alex Mitchell, 8 Juarno Augustus, 7 Henry Pollock, 6 Josh Kemeny, 5 Alex Coles, 4 Temo Mayanavanua, 3 Trevor Davison, 2 Curtis Langdon, 1 Emmanuel Iyogun.
Replacements: 16 Henry Walker, 17 Tom West, 18 Luke Green, 19 Tom Lockett, 20 Angus Scott-Young, 21 Tom Pearson, 22 Tom James, 23 Rory Hutchinson

Clermont: 15 Alex Newsome, 14 Bautista Delguy, 13 Irae Simone, 12 George Moala, 11 Alivereti Raka, 10 Anthony Belleau, 9 Sebastien Bezy, 8 Fritz Lee (captain), 7 Killian Tixeront, 6 Pita-Gus Sowakula, 5 Thomas Ceyte, 4 Rob Simmons, 3 Cristian Ojovan, 2 Barnabe Massa, 1 Giorgi Akhaladze.
Replacements: 16 Folau Fainga'a, 17 Etienne Falgoux, 18 Michael Ala'alatoa, 19 Anthime Hemery, 20 Alexandre Fischer, 21 Jules Bousquet, 22 Ben Urdapilleta, 23 Pierre Fouyssac

Referee: Andrew Brace (Ireland)
Assistant referees: Andrew Cole (Australia) Padraic Reidy (Ireland)
TMO: Marius Jonker (South Africa)