Newcastle Red Bulls rotate as they head to Quins

This afternoon sees Newcastle Red Bulls take on Harlequins at The Stoop in the final round of Group games in The Prem Cup. With both teams out of the competition there's a fair bit of rotation as both teams have the same goal of chasing a top eight Gallagher Prem finish and progress in their European competitions in the coming weeks.

Quins mix and match

Harlequins go with an inexperienced front row in Quins terms, amassing four Quins appearances between Alesaandro Heaney, Jimmy Staples and Joe Jones. Although Jones is vastly experienced around various teams. The second row sees the experienced Kieran Treadwell and Jonny Green link up. The back row is stacked with Chandler Cunningham-South, Jack Kenningham and Alex Dombrandt going to prove a tough test for Red Bulls.

The back line sees experienced Stu Townsend at scrum half linking up with Connor Slevin. The centre partnership of Ben Waghorn and Luke Northmore will look to punch holes in the Red Bulls defence. The back three is lively looking with Nick David at full back and Cadan Murley and Rodrigo Isgro on the wings.

On the bench Quins name Jerold Gorleku, Will Hobbson, Simon Kerrod, Zach Carr, Will Evans, Jack Grant, Sean Kerr and Cameron Anderson.

Quins have shown at times the ability to turn it on in a Quins style way this season, often saving that type of performance for Europe. They'll look to use this game as a foundation to build on for the rest of the season as they look to find consistency.

Red Bulls rest and give opportunity

Newcastle Red Bulls have twenty players unavailable and have sensibly opted to rest the likes of George McGuigan and Tom Christie.

The front row sees Adam Brocklebank, Ollie Fletcher who captains the side and Murray McCallum who I'd have looked at resting. Tim Cardall and MR consistent, Oscar Usher are in the second row. The back row sees Reuben Parsons who will be relishing this opportunity against the Quins back row, Tom Gordon and Ollie Leatherbarrow.

Simon Benitez Cruz and Brett Connon will look to steer the ship at half back. The centre partnership of Sammy Arnold who will no doubt be used to get Red Bulls on the front foot and Rhys Beeckmans who gets more experience in and around the first team will look forward to this one. The back three are Alex Hearle, Oli Spencer and Elliott Obatoyinbo.

The bench sees Samson Adejimi, Connor Hancock, Micky Rewcastle, John Hawkins, George Bolam, Joe Davis, Sam Stuart and Sam Waugh. Interestingly there's two scrum halves on the bench when there are others who could cover, not selected.

Red Bulls will look for improvements

Red Bulls will have looked back on last Friday's game against Northampton Saints and the one big area for improvement is around defence. At times last week, Saints cut the Red Bulls defence to shreds all too easily. If that happens this afternoon, Quins are very capable of taking advantage of that.

The other area is a reduction in the error count, they might put that down to one of those days as it looked more like players having a bad night than anything else.