Owen Farrell starts for Saracens as host of England stars return

England captain Owen Farrell is set to start for Saracens as one of seven England internationals who have returned from the World Cup to feature for the Gallagher Premiership champions against Leicester Tigers at the StoneX Stadium on Saturday.

Farrell will captain the London outfit against the Tigers, and will be joined in the starting XV by Billy Vunipola, Elliot Daly, Jamie George, Maro Itoje and Ben Earl, with the latter three seeing a lot of action for England in their World Cup campaign which only ended last week with a bronze medal. On top of those six starters, Theo Dan is also on the bench a week after his try-scoring display against Argentina at the Stade de France.

“It has been fantastic to be back at Sarries this week and be back with everyone,” Farrell said, as reported by the PA.

“It is always nice to come back after a while away, and we are now really excited to get stuck in to the season all together.”

Leicester, on the other hand, have decided to rest all of their England internationals for the trip down south.

Saracens XV: 15 Alex Goode, 14 Sean Maitland, 13 Alex Lozowski, 12 Nick Tompkins, 11 Elliot Daly, 10 Owen Farrell (c), 9 Aled Davies, 1 Mako Vunipola, 2 Jamie George, 3 Marco Riccioni, 4 Maro Itoje, 5 Nick Isiekwe, 6 Andy Christie, 7 Ben Earl, 8 Billy Vunipola

Replacements: 16 Theo Dan, 17 Eroni Mawi, 18 Alec Clarey, 19 Callum Hunter-Hill, 20 Hugh Tizard, 21 Tom Willis, 22 Ivan van Zyl, 23 Tom Parton

Leicester Tigers XV: 15 Mike Brown [12], 14 Josh Bassett [5], 13 Guy Porter [66], 12 Dan Kelly [62], 11 Ollie Hassell-Collins [6], 10 Jamie Shillcock [7], 9 Tom Whiteley [10], 1 James Cronin [17], 2 Charlie Clare [83], 3 Joe Heyes [128], 4 Cameron Henderson [42], 5 Sam Carter [5], 6 Hanro Liebenberg (c) [90], 7 Tommy Reffell [101], 8 Olly Cracknell [28]

Replacements: 16 Nic Dolly [30], 17 Francois van Wyk [37], 18 Will Hurd [30], 19 Harry Wells [180], 20 Matt Rogerson [5], 21 Joe Powell [6], 22 Charlie Atkinson [22], 23 Solomone Kata*