TOMORROW's home game with Newport Gwent Dragons will go a long way towards determining whether Newcastle Falcons make the quarter-finals of the European Challenge Cup, but Dean Richards will not be changing his policy of using the competition to blood his domestic young guns.

Falcons head into tomorrow’s penultimate pool game a point adrift of the Dragons in the Pool C table, with the five pool winners and three best runners-up guaranteed a place in the last eight.

With Newcastle’s final group game pitting them against Bucharest Wolves, a win tomorrow would all but secure a knock-out place, but Richards has resisted the temptation to select some of his biggest names.

Instead, he will continue to use the European matches to bolster the club’s English-player quota and provide an opportunity for some of the academy side to gain senior experience, a tactic that proved extremely effective in the first half of the campaign.

“It will be the same group of players, and it will be what it will be,” said Richards. “I am excited by that because it gives the youngsters that window to show what they can do, and I think it is great.

“From our point of view, the bread and butter is still the league, and it always will be. Yes, we will throw out lot in with Europe, but climbing that ladder is where the focus is.”

Richards’s starting selection contains eight changes from the side that contested the last round of the European Challenge Cup against Stade Francais in December.

The competition’s top tackler to date, Sean Robinson, lines up in the second row alongside Kane Thompson as he returns to the Falcons’ starting line-up for the first time since the match in Paris, with Chris Harris also returning to European action after turning heads in the Aviva Premiership in recent weeks.

Another youngster, Simon Hammersley, will play at full-back, with Tom Penny lining up on the right wing. Tom Catterick starts at fly-half, with Ruki Tipuna completing the half-back pairing.

Andy Saull returns to his position as captain of the European team, leading his side from the back row where he will line up alongside Richard Mayhew and Chris York.

Newcastle Falcons: Hammersley, Penny, Powell, Harris, Tait, Catterick, Tipuna; Rogers, McGuigan, Brookes, Robinson, Thompson, R Mayhew, Saull, York.

Replacements: Hawkins, Vickers, Fry, Witty, Welch, Davies, Clegg, Socino.