Scarlets head into round five of the European Rugby Champions Cup with everything still to play as they lie in second place equal on points with tomorrow evening’s opposition Leicester Tigers.

The West Wales region secured an emphatic victory over Leicester Tigers at Parc y Scarlets in the second round of the competition despite a high injury toll and will travel to Welford Road for Friday evening’s clash ready to dig deep for a big performance despite injuries right across the squad.

Amongst Scarlets’ injury list are six first choice front row players in captain Ken Owens, fellow hookers Emyr Phillips and Kirby Myhill, loosehead prop Phil John and tighthead props Samson Lee and Rhodri Jones.

Scarlets Academy hooker Ryan Elias will make his European debut for the region alongside young loosehead prop Rob Evans and experienced tighthead Jacobie Adriaanse.

Ahead of the huge European clash Scarlets Head Coach Wayne Pivac said: “We have a pretty extensive injury toll but there’s not a lot we can do about that.

“If we look back at the Tigers game here at Parc y Scarlets, we had a bit of disarray in that game with four injuries in the first half hour.

“We rallied the troops that day, dug deep and came up with a great result –something similar will be required with this game.”

Looking at the region’s opposition Pivac went on to say: “Leicester have a very mobile line-out which is very efficient and it’s going to be a big challenge for us.”

With two victories each Scarlets and Tigers are both still very much in the campaign with the winner of the round five clash keeping the competition alive for the final pool game next week – with Scarlets taking on reigning champions Toulon.

Pivac went on to say: “We’re very much still in the hunt, we’ve spoken this week and said ‘lets park the PRO12’. We’ve put in four pretty good performances in the first four games with two wins.

“The performance away from home against Toulon was a very solid performance. We’ve talked about the performance against Toulon on the road and that’s the sort of effort we’re going to need and also the gutsy performance against Tigers out here – we need to transfer that to their ground.

“It’s a big game, there’s a lot riding on it – we’re second equal with Leicester –the winner of this game is still in with a chance next week.”