Glasgow have left the Islanders who have put the Scarlets to the sword in recent games on the bench as they head to Llanelli for the crunch Guinness PRO12 clash this afternoon.
The Warriors could just about wrap up a play-off place after being 15 points off the pace just two months ago if they win their eighth successive match in the league, and move closer to a precious home semi-final as they seek to defend the title they won last year.
However late season visits to Parc Y Scarlets have proved to be banana skins in both the last two seasons, and the Warriors have picked a pack for the physical battle they expect.
Strangely however they have opted for the diminutive Lee Jones on the left wing rather than man mountain Taqele Naiyaravoro, who rumbled over for a hat-trick when the clubs met at Scotstoun earlier this season, and kept Leone Nakarawa on the bench.
“You need to bring physicality against Scarlets,” argued head coach Gregor Townsend. “You look at their back row, at Jake Ball, at Rob Evans in the front row, at hooker Ken Owens, these are physical players.
“In terms of our ball-carrying and our support at the breakdown, that’s what we’re looking for from the back row but also the second row. Tim (Swinson) has been playing very well in defence and attack so gets that opportunity to start.
“We know Leone and Taqele’s strengths, but everyone in the squad has a role to play. Leone has been playing really well but it’s one of those positions where we have so much competition. It’s a very good situation for me to be in where we can have guys like Leone and Taqele on the bench.”
Scarlets had to call off a training session this week as a bug swept through the squad, but Townsend had his own experience of that in Italy last week.
“It sounds like what we had in Italy and if it’s a similar bug it’s out of the system in 24 hours,” he said. “We had to cancel a full training session we had planned but our forwards still trained against them, and while most of our backs were down they still played at the weekend.”
Sure enough Scarlets then named a squad that’s largely full strength, looking to bounce back from a surprise home defeat to Cardiff Blues that allowed Glasgow to leapfrog them into third place in the table.
“That result was a surprise as they had beaten the Ospreys away from home the week before,” he said. “Cardiff are playing really good rugby so we knew it would be close, but Scarlets have a brilliant home record the last couple of years.
“The game itself was interesting and we did learn a fair bit. Cardiff played a certain type of rugby and they got their rewards from that but we expect Scarlets to be improved from that game, and they’ve already beaten us this season so we know how tough it will be.”
Glasgow have just one additional injury issue as Peter Horne became the sixth squad member to go down with concussion after his two-try man of the match performance against Zebre last week.
“It was a delayed one, he complained of headaches on Tuesday so we started the protocol,” said Townsend. “It’s a shame for him because he played really well last week, but then so did Alex (Dunbar) and Mark (Bennett) so we’ve obviously got good options there too.”
Team: Stuart Hogg; Tommy Seymour, Mark Bennett, Alex Dunbar, Lee Jones; Finn Russell, Henry Pyrgos; Gordon Reid, Fraser Brown, Sila Puafisi; Tim Swinson, Jonny Gray (capt); Rob Harley, Ryan Wilson, Josh Strauss.
Replacements: Pat MacArthur, Jerry Yanuyanutawa, Zander Fagerson, Leone Nakarawa, Tyrone Holmes, Grayson Hart, Duncan Weir, Taqele Naiyaravoro.