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Leicester Tigers will be without influential inside centre Matt Toomua when they return to Aviva Premiership action at Newcastle on Sunday afternoon.

The Australian, who has been in exceptional form in the Leicester midfield, suffered bone-bruising late in the first half of last weekend’s European Cup win over Castres at Welford Road.

The initial worry for Tigers was that Toomua had suffered the type of ligament damage that wrecked his first season with the club. However, head coach Matt O’Connor hopes that it will be a case of a few weeks on the sideline for Toomua, rather than months.

“Matt Toomua’s injury is not as serious as it looked,” O’Connor said. “He has a bit of bone-bruising in that joint but the ligament is sound and intact. The difficulty around the bone-bruising is that you don’t really know how long it takes to recover but it is not nearly as serious as we first thought.

“Thankfully we have a couple of down weeks around the Anglo-Welsh Cup and hopefully he doesn’t miss too many games for us.”

Toomua joins fellow centre Manu Tuilagi on the injured list and Gareth Owen is also ruled out for a couple of weeks after picking up an injury early on against Castres.

“Gareth Owen has a minor hamstring strain so he should be back for the Sale game in the Premiership but we have got good cover there,” O’Connor continued. “We have got young guys like Charlie Thacker and George Worth and the experienced guys like Matt Smith and Mat Tait so there are a lot of options there. We have trained really well so far this week so we will have a look later in the week to see where we end up.”

On the positive side, wing Adam Thompstone is set for his first appearance of the season having recovered from his neck problem. “Adam will be in the 23 on Sunday. He will come into that bench slot with Joe Ford and Sam Harrison,” the Tigers boss said. “Jonny May will be going away (with England) so it is perfect timing and still have Nick Malouf and Telusa Veainu, who is not going away with Tonga.”

The picture among the forwards is better, too.

Tigers feared that prop Ellis Genge had suffered ankle damage when he limped out of the action against Castres but O’Connor said: “ Gengey is fine. We didn’t need to scan his ankle in the end. It was just a bit of a twist so he is fine and will take part this weekend.

“Mike Williams (ankle) is progressing really well. He is over his ban now and isn’t too far off for this weekend. We will make a call on that later in the week.”