The reception Henry Pollock will receive at Mattioli Woods Welford Road on Saturday may not quite be on the Ellis Park level where the stadium announcer told the Springboks to “hurt him” and Guy Pepper was voraciously booed simply for looking like the Northampton back-rower. Yet on Prem Rugby’s derby weekend, there is no doubt about who will play the part of antagonist in chief.

Many of Pollock’s key staging posts in his club career have come against Leicester. Welford Road was where Pollock made his Premiership debut in 2023. In my book, he delivered his most influential performance against Tigers in last season’s Prem semi-final. Yet just three weeks before that Pollock suffered his most disappointing day in a Saints shirt at Welford Road.

To be clear, Pollock was not the reason that Northampton lost. They were already trailing 34-5 and down to 13 men when he came on as a replacement in the 51st minute. The game was gone but so too was Pollock’s head. In a mad half-hour cameo, Pollock was immediately pressed into action as an emergency hooker. For all his talents, line-out throwing is not one of them, overthrowing his first effort.

After his second throw was deemed not straight, Pollock barged Jack van Poortvliet and then tried to pick a fight with Hanro Liebenberg, albeit while maintaining a safe distance. “I wouldn’t want to scrap with Hanro personally,” said Billy Searle, the Leicester fly-half who was watching from the stands. “Fair play for trying to take him on, but I wouldn’t want to do that.”

Things did not improve from there as Pollock conceded two penalties, drawing the ire of Matthew Carley, the referee, who warned Saints captain George Furbank about his conduct. Leicester’s England contingent definitely helped to rile Pollock with TikTok dance partner Freddie Steward taking great pleasure in ruffling his hair.

At the final whistle, Pollock also engaged in a heated conversation with Ollie Chessum, the Leicester captain. “I’m great friends with Henry in camp and off the field, but that kind of all has to go out of the window,” Chessum said. “I am guilty of it as well. I’m a bit of a redhead, literally and metaphorically, in the game. Tempers flare. That’s the nature of the game.”

Pollock responded in the best possible fashion against the same opposition in the semi-final where he let his actions do the talking as he made 26 carries. Crucially, he also kept his emotions in check around the officials.

“The thing that pleased me the most is that a lot of flak came his way post Welford Road and you can talk about loads of things that Henry does really well but I think his ability to learn from experience and apply that very quickly and effectively,” Phil Dowson, the Northampton director of rugby, said after that game. “I think how he has changed how he talks to referees has changed in probably three weeks and how he deals with confrontation has changed as well.”

That match was on home soil, however. Can Pollock put the team on his back again in hostile territory without rising to whatever provocations come his way? Leicester deny any pre-match plan to target Pollock specifically, but if the opportunity comes to poke the bear it will be taken.

“During a game, if you feel like someone is struggling with their emotional control then players might react to it but we don’t really do that type of thing pre-game,” Geoff Parling, the Leicester head coach, said. “It is not a necessary thing. To be fair to Pollock, I think he is pretty good at controlling his emotions.”

After all the Eddie Hearn-led fanfare of his contract negotiations, Pollock has had a relatively quiet start to the season. He is due an eye-catching performance with England going into camp before the Nations Championship next week. Entering the Tigers’ cage is the perfect place to do it.