Scarlets v Connacht: Teams

Scarlets coach Nigel Davies welcomes back a quartet of his international stars for the visit of Connacht to Parc y Scarlets on Saturday.

Having been shocked by Magners League new boys Treviso in the opening game of the new campaign, Davies has wheeled out his big guns.

Stephen Jones, Matthew Rees, Jonathan Davies and Sean Lamont will all make their first appearances of the season, while Jonny Fa'amatuainu will make his starting debut in the second row.

New skipper Rees will form a new-look front row with Phil John and Rhys Thomas coming into side.

Morgan Stoddart, Gareth Maule, Rhys Priestland, Damian Welch, Deacon Manu, Emyr Phillips and Iestyn Thomas are all dropped from the starting XV for the clash, while David Lyons is still not fit to return.

And Davies believes that the competition for places in his squad will start to bring the best out of his players.

"It's a very competitive environment here at the moment, which is what we wanted. I made it clear that this week would be the first time we would be not preclude anyone from selection and would pick our starting XV from the entire squad," said Davies.

"We planned to bring back some of our senior players for this first home game, after they have had full training and conditioning over the past four weeks and it's been good to see the spark in the squad on the training field this week.

"First and foremost we have to win games and maybe in the past we've tried to win games playing pretty rugby but we don't always need to do that - and if we were able to shut-up shop out in Italy we would have won that game.

"We weren't able to do that last weekend - we have got to have a game that we can go to when there's a change in momentum in matches. There were just a couple of key moments when things swung Treviso's way - but we didn't take control back - we have to learn to adjust and get the right balance in our game to manage these shifts in momentum."

Mike McComish has been called into the Connacht line-up to replace the injured Ezra Taylor.

The summer recruit from the Reds has damaged his knee and is currently awaiting for the results from a scan on the injury.

With John Muldoon still missing, scrum-half Frank Murphy retains the captaincy.

Scarlets: 15 Andy Fenby, 14 George North, 13 Regan King, 12 Jon Davies, 11 Sean Lamont, 10 Stephen Jones, 9 Martin Roberts, 1 Phil John, 2 Matthew Rees (capt), 3 Rhys Thomas, 4 Lou Reed, 5 Jonny Fa'amatuainu, 6 Josh Turnbull, 7 Johnathan Edwards, 8 Rob McCusker.
Replacements: 16 Ken Owens, 17 Iestyn Thomas, 18 Peter Edwards, 19 Dominic Day, 20 Nic Cudd, 21 Tavis Knoyle, 22 Gareth Maule, 23 Rhys Priestland.

Connacht: 15 Gavin Duffy, 14 Troy Nathan, 13 Niva Ta'auso, 12 Keith Matthews, 11 Fionn Carr, 10 Ian Keatley, 9 Frank Murphy (C), 1 Brett Wilkinson, 2 Sean Cronin, 3 Jamie Hagan, 4 Michael Swift, 5 Bernie Upton, 6 Michael McCarthy, 7 Ray Ofisa, 8 Mike McComish.
Replacements: 16 Adrian Flavin, 17 Ronan Loughney, 18 Rob Sweeney, 19 Dave Nolan, 20 Shane Conneely, 21 Cillian Willis, 22 Miah Nikora, 23 Tiernan O'Halloran