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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Sport
Michael Scully

Michael Ala'alatoa among four full debutants for Leinster in pre-season clash with Harlequins

Johnny Sexton returns to skipper a Leinster side that has four starting debutants for their only pre-season game - the Aviva Stadium encounter with Premiership champs Harlequins tonight (7pm).

A fifth, Niall Comerford, could come off the bench for Leo Cullen's side, with tickets still available for a game that has a capacity for 15,000 fans.

Samoa prop Michael Ala’alatoa, who has signed from Crusaders, makes his bow along with Brian Deeny, who will be alongside Devin Toner in the second row - with only the 266 caps in the difference.

Leinster's Brian Deeny in action for Ireland against Wales in last year's under-20 Six Nations championship (©INPHO/Morgan Treacy)

Sexton hasn't played since he was stood down after suffering a concussion against Exeter in April, and as he admitted last week he is hoping to hit the ground running with the URC opener against the Bulls to come in a fortnight's time.

"Quins will provide a good test for us, generally the English teams are well geared up at the start of the year," said Cullen.

"Quins are a good, young, exciting, attacking team so hopefully it will be a good game for us and challenge our guys in many ways.

"We've a good group for this game, I'm looking forward to seeing them play, with a view to kicking into proper action the following week against the Bulls, who are very, very battle hardened.

"With only five games (in the first fixtures block) and less regular season games than normal, you need to get up and running pretty quickly. It's going to be very competitive this season.

Leinster Head Coach Leo Cullen (©INPHO/Dave Winter)

"So it's an exciting challenge and then obviously the fans are the big thing.

"To get back playing in front of fans again will be pretty amazing, 1,200 people seemed like a hell of a lot of people for the Dragons game last season, but to be able to get decent numbers through the turnstiles again (will be great).

"We've had quite a long block of pre-season, which has given us a bit of time to work on things.

"But we need to see it now in real-life action against proper opposition gunning for us."

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