Lewis Ludlow will captain Gloucester Rugby against Connacht Rugby at the Sportsground on Saturday (kick off 12:45pm) in the second leg of the Heineken Champions Cup double-header.

Gloucester Rugby faced the same opposition at Kingsholm last Sunday, and make several changes to their starting line-up – only Louis Rees-Zammit, Mark Atkinson, Ollie Thorley, Fraser Balmain, Gerbrandt Grobler and Ruan Ackermann retaining their places in the starting line-up.

However, several starters from last weekend – Franco Marais, Franco Mostert, Ben Morgan, Joe Simpson, Danny Cipriani and Chris Harris – are named amongst the replacements.

Head Coach Johan Ackermann spoke this week of the challenge of playing back to back games against the same opposition.

“I still feel we didn’t use a few things that we’d prepared for last week’s game. That’s a good thing, we don’t have to reinvent those.

“There’s obviously a few things that we’ve looked at and, if we can do them a bit better then, hopefully, we can get some reward from that. But there’s not really been enough time to change a whole lot of things.

“When we pick a team, we pick a team that we believe can win and will win. We’re not going to look ahead of ourselves and think about what we can achieve.

“Hopefully, if we improve, we can repeat last week’s result. If we can do that, then we’ll re-assess where we are in the competition with two games left. There’s a lot of rugby left, and the only thing we can control is how we train and how we play on Saturday.”

Gloucester Rugby:

Matt Banahan; 14. Louis Rees-Zammit, 13. Billy Twelvetrees, 12. Mark Atkinson, 11. Ollie Thorley; 10. Lloyd Evans, 9. Callum Braley; 1. Josh Hohneck, 2. Todd Gleave, 3. Fraser Balmain; 4. Alex Craig, 5. Gerbrandt Grobler; 6. Freddie Clarke, 7. Lewis Ludlow (capt), 8. Ruan Ackermann

Replacements:

Franco Marais, 17. Alex Seville, 18. Jamal Ford-Robinson, 19. Franco Mostert, 20. Ben Morgan, 21. Joe Simpson, 22. Danny Cipriani, 23. Chris Harris

Unavailable for selection:

Ruan Dreyer, Corné Fourie, James Hanson, Willi Heinz, Jaco Kriel, Tom Marshall, Ed Slater, Owen Williams, Jason Woodward

Ludlow to skipper Gloucester Rugby in Heineken Champions Cup re-match in Connacht

Related News