Ben Youngs will join a minute’s applause at Welford Road in memory of his sister-in-law - before playing a lead role for Leicester against Northampton.
An emotional afternoon is assured, just days after Tiffany, the wife of Ben’s brother and long-time team mate Tom, passed away following a heroic battle with cancer.
Add to that the East Midlands derby is a Premiership semi-final and both Tigers captain Ellis Genge and fly-half George Ford are playing their last home game before leaving the club.
Saints fly-half Dan Biggar captured the prevailing mood in yesterday’s Mirror, saying that for all that is at stake he hoped the game would be played “in the right way to honour Tiffany - and brings supporters and players together”.
He added: “A game of rugby pales into insignificance beside what that family is going through and I imagine there’s going to be a huge amount of emotion at Welford Road."
Scrum-half Ben, England’s most-capped player, admits the Welford Road factor is “huge” as table-topping Tigers go in search of their first title since 2013.
Speaking before news of Tiff’s passing, he said: “When you have not been anywhere near the play-offs for a while, watching it from afar and watching other teams get success, you do question 'will we get an opportunity again?’
“We recently played in a big knock-out game [against Leinster] and we didn’t get it right that day. We took some big lessons from that. I’ll be treating this like a Test match.”
