Wood tired but will play

Necessity being the mother of invention, Keith Wood is expected to take his customary place in the middle of the Harlequins front-row for their Allied Dunbar Premiership derby away to Richmond.

Despite being "run down", the pressing nature of this encounter and the absence of Quins' four continentals, who are on Latin Cup duty for France and Italy respectively, obliges the Lions and Irish hooker to play.

"I trained fully on Thursday," said Wood yesterday, who played down the decision to undergo a blood test. "That is customary procedure at the club. It's just that I'm fairly exhausted after a strenuous year, playing with the Lions during the summer and having a fairly intense start to this season.

"My body has been under huge pressure physically and the harder you train, the more susceptible you are to colds and flus," 25-year-old Wood explained.

Harlequins are under added pressure to reverse the trend of successive European Cup defeats to Cardiff and Munster, especially as they undid much of the good work of their opening league victory over Northampton by then losing at home to Bath. "We played appallingly badly in Limerick and we need a win, but then again we need a win every week," admitted a slightly careworn Wood.

Leicester welcome back Eric Miller, Neil Back and centre Stuart Potter, for their derby with a Northampton side stung badly by Connacht and with 17 of their 30-man squad nursing injuries. Among the players definitely ruled out are Shem Tatupu (knee), Jason Chandler (shoulder) and Jonathan Bell, whose recurring hamstring problems must now be jeopardising his chances of playing for Ireland against the All Blacks in four weeks' time.

London Irish, buoyed by four successive Conference wins, travel to Gloucester (themselves Conference pool winners) for tomorrow's televised Sky game with coach Willie Anderson describing the mood in Sunbury as the most "positive" that it's been this season.

On the domestic front, the four provincial leagues continue this weekend without any of the front line players who were involved at European level with the various provinces.

In Leinster, there is a three-way tie at the top of Section B between St Mary's, Clontarf and Co Carlow entering this weekend's final round of group matches, with Wanderers four points behind and not out of the hunt given there is a maximum of seven points available including bonus points.

Clontarf and St Mary's meet at Castle Avenue tomorrow in what looks, effectively, like a play-off for one of the semi-final places, while Carlow are entertaining Wanderers at the same time.

The tight three-way tussle between Lansdowne, Terenure and Greystones in Section A should become clearer after the latter two meet at Dr Hickey Park tomorrow. Lansdowne are inactive but, like Terenure, will still have two matches remaining after this weekend.