Harlequins – Sale

The first round in the top flight of English Rugby, known as the Gallagher Premiership starting this year, will see Harlequins hosting Sale Sharks at Twickenham Stoop.

The Quins had a season to forget last year, finishing 10th out of 12th with just 7 wins in 22 matches. While Harlequins will likely finish in the second half of the table again, they are expected to do better than 7 wins. Quite a few quality players have come in and 4 of them have already been selected for the match squad against Sale.

Sale Sharks finished on the 8th place last season, claiming 10 wins in 22 games, and the team was close to claiming a Champions Cup spot, but fell just short. All in all it was actually a pretty good result for the Greater Manchester club and they will hope to at least repeat the performance in this new campaign.

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Team news & lineups:

New signings Earle, Tapuai and Symons will start for Harlequins. Sale Sharks have been handed a big blow after the suspension of their star Summer signing, England International Chris Ashton, so they will have to do without him – but at least they got the suspension of Alexandru Tarus rescinded, so he will be on the bench.

Harlequins: 15 Mike Brown, 14 Nathan Earle, 13 Joe Marchant, 12 Ben Tapuai, 11 Aaron Morris, 10 Marcus Smith, 9 Danny Care, 8 Renaldo Bothma, 7 Luke Wallace, 6 Chris Robshaw (c), 5 Dino Lamb, 4 Matt Symons, 3 Will Collier, 2 Elia Elia, 1 Joe Marler

Sale Sharks: 15 Byron McGuigan, 14 Denny Solomona, 13 Sam James, 12 Luke James, 11 Marland Yarde, 10 AJ MacGinty, 9 Will Cliff, 8 Jono Ross (c), 7 Ben Curry, 6 Tom Curry, 5 James Phillips, 4 Bryn Evans, 3 WillGriff John, 2 Rob Webber, 1 Ross Harrison

Both teams are expected to finish somewhere between 8th and 10th in the table this season, and they really are two very evenly matched clubs in terms of quality – although one might give the edge to the Quins here given their collenction of England Internationals. In these conditions, home court advantage (always extremely important in European rugby) could and should make the difference.

That is especially true considering that Harlequins has always been a very good home side, being traiditionally strong at Twickenham Stoop. Even last year in a very poor season they somehow managed to end with a winning record at home (6-5 at the Stopp, 1-10 away).

Pretty much the same can be said about Sale, which had a 7-4 home record last year, while going only 3-8 on the road.

One of last year`s home wins for the Quins was against Sale (42-26), and in fact the last 6 meetings between the two clubs have always been won by the home team.

With the Quins having home court advantage and benefiting from some new top players, they should have enough to claim victory here against a Sharks side which misses one of its main weapons in the form of Chris Ashton. Prediction: Harlequins – Sale Sharks 32 – 23.

Pick: Harlequins
Odds: 1.63 @ 1xBet
Stake: 8
Possible profit: 5.04
Event date: 1 September