Christmas comes early at The Bay when Nottingham Rugby host Coventry in the Greene King IPA Championship on Sunday.

The match will be the third meeting between the Midlands rivals in six weeks following the Pool stage of the Championship Cup, with both sides entering the fixture on a high having qualified for the quarter-final of the new competition.

Green and Whites Head Coach Neil Fowkes has praised the qualities his side have shown during that period.

In particular, the maturity shown by the club’s younger team members in a winner takes all victory against Doncaster Knights last weekend typified the trademark togetherness his coaching staff have instilled within the team.

Speaking ahead of Sunday’s game, Fowkes said: “We’ve enjoyed the Cup competition so far and the lads have taken to it pretty well but they really want to get back in to the league now, they’ve been looking at this Coventry game for a while. It’s a big Christmas game against a local rival.

“We’ve played each other twice now so we know each other pretty well so the lads are very excited to get out and play against a very attacking-minded Coventry side.”

Despite cup success, Nottingham have struggled with injuries in the last few weeks, with the physical match between Yorkshire Carnegie two weeks ago taking its toll on the team.

“We’ve had our injuries, last week we were in a situation where we had 16 fit players on Tuesday but look there’s no panic from us and no panic from the players. The lads came in and did the job, we just take each game as it comes and we’re not going to have any drama over it,” added Fowkes.

Full team to face Coventry:

15. Sean Scanlon
14. Jack Spittle
13. Will Millett
12. Luke Peters
11. David Williams
10. Shane O’Leary
9. Murray McConnell
1. James Penman
2. Jake Farnworth
3. Mike Daniels
4. Llewelyn Jones
5. Seb Cecil
6. Shane Buckley
7. Will Owen
8. Jordan Coghlan

Replacements:

16. Ben Brownlie
17.Aniseko Sio
18. Rory Burke
19. George Cox
20. Josh Poullet
21. Darryl Veenendaal
22. Gearoid Lyons

Advance tickets for the game are available to purchase via nottinghamrugby.co.uk.