TOBY Flood makes his 100th appearance for Newcastle Falcons on Friday night (7.45pm) when he captains them in their Gallagher Premiership home match with Bath Rugby.

The fly-half will skipper the side more than 12 years after his first team debut, the 60-times-capped England international making his first senior appearance back in February 2005.

In all the Falcons show seven changes from the side which started at Harlequins last Friday, fit-again Johnny Williams partnering Chris Harris in the centres after the latter was released from the Scotland squad.

Tom Arscott replaces Alex Tait on the wing, Sam Stuart coming in at scrum-half behind a pack which sees starts for hooker Kyle Cooper, lock Glen Young and Fijian No 8 Nemani Nagusa.

Director of rugby Dean Richards said: “The great thing about this group is that they are very honest and self-critical, everyone is on the same page in terms of how we push forward from last weekend’s defeat at Harlequins and we’re all picking up on the same areas when we identify where we need to improve.

“This week we’ve got a couple of boys back from injury and from national team duty, and we’ll see what happens. Everything is about what happens this Friday, not what happened last week, and the Gallagher Premiership is the best club competition in the world because the big games just keep on coming every single week.

“Bath have lost a few players to England but we’ve got five lads away on international duty ourselves, we’re both still good sides and I’m looking forward to the game. We go into every match saying it’s a ‘must win’, and this one is no different to any other in that respect.”

Looking to extend their unbeaten home streak to four games in all competitions, Richards said: “Getting ourselves into a position from which to launch our attack was a problem last week, which came down to a lack of accuracy on our behalf and allowing them to win that territory battle.

“We scrummaged really well, we dominated there and we were stealing line-outs for fun. There were building blocks within the performance such as the way we defended but we know we need to do more in attack, and we have been working hard on that during the week.”

Tickets for Friday’s game are available by calling 0871 226 6060 or from Kingston Park Stadium in person.