Fans eager for a sneak preview of the 2020 Guinness Six Nations can start getting excited following the release of the 2019/20 English Premiership fixtures.
A number of stars from the Championship will square off for their club sides over the course of the season – with the first round of fixtures kicking off on Friday 18 October, the same weekend as the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals.
Bristol Bears and Bath Rugby are the first game of the campaign on that Friday evening, with reigning champions Saracens taking on Northampton Saints on Saturday and newly-promoted London Irish’s trip to Wasps on Sunday some of the other highlights.
Once each club’s international contingent is back from Japan, there are plenty of clashes to whet the appetite for the 2020 Championship, with a rematch of last month’s Premiership Rugby Final between Chiefs and Sarries on December 29 at Sandy Park one such example.
That could see Exeter and Scotland superstar Stuart Hogg – a two-time Six Nations Player of the Championship – lining up against his international team-mate Sean Maitland and Wales’s back-three star Liam Williams, not to mention England fly-half Owen Farrell.
Another big game for Saracens comes on March 28 when they take on Harlequins at the new £1 billion, 62,000-seater Tottenham Hotspur Stadium – where Farrell and a young pretender to his fly-half throne, Marcus Smith, may go head to head.
“I look forward to all the big games – I love them!” said Saracens coach Alex Sanderson about the fixture. “There’s no better place to play Harlequins than the big stadiums.
“I’m really looking forward to going down there. The boys have been there, and they’ve said it’s worth every penny of the billion pounds it cost.”
And another fixture for Guinness Six Nations fans to circle in their calendars is The Clash at Twickenham on April 18, between Wasps and Bath.
Welsh back-rowers Thomas Young and Taulupe Faletau could well be going head to head, while Bath also possess a back-line full of stars of Guinness Six Nations past and future, including Jamie Roberts, Joe Cokanasiga, Anthony Watson and Jonathan Joseph.
