Thomas has spent the summer going through an intensive rehabilitation programme and has been named on the bench for the clash against the Russian national side, who are continuing their preparations for the world cup.
Joe Bedford and Tom Brown will make their first appearances at Rodney Parade, whilst an expanded bench sees Rhys Buckley and Darren Waters also looking to make their debuts for the Dragons.
“Darren has worked really hard this summer and I’m confident that he will get straight back into things tomorrow. We’re fortunate that we’re picking from, more or less, a full-strength squad with is a great situation to be in,” said Dragons head-coach Darren Edwards.
“We’ve got a number of young players that have been brought through into our senior squad from last season and we’ll be capitalising on their experience. Following a strong finish to last season, we are concentrating on out consistency and developing our squad of home-grown players into a cohesive unit.
“This match is a great opportunity for our younger players, as well as our new signings, to get out and show what they can do. It’s something I always love about the pre-season friendly – bringing new faces into our match day environment and integrate them into the way we play the game.
“Tomorrow’s game will be a tough challenge. I watched Russian the Churchill Cup and they made a decent account of themselves there. We mustn’t forget that they are preparing for a World Cup so any Russian player will be staking his claim for a place so I think it’s going to be a hard-fought contest.
Both teams will be playing with an expanded bench and rolling substitutions.
Dragons squad for Russia (Rodney Parade Tuesday 16th August, 7pm)
15. Steffan Jones, 14. Matthew Pewtner, 13. Tom Riley, 12. Ashley Smith, 11. Michael Poole, 10. Jason Tovey, 9. Joe Bedford 1. Phil Price, 2. Tom Willis, 3. Ben Castle, 4. Adam Jones, 5. Scott Morgan, 6. Jevon Groves, 7. Gavin Thomas, 8. Tom Brown
Replacements
Aaron Coundley, Rhys Buckley, Dan Way, Hugo Ellis, Andrew Coombs, , Darren Waters, Wayne Evans, Matthew Jones, Patrick Leach, Adam Hughes, Martyn Thomas
Meanwhile, the Russian Federation have named a side seeing 13 changes, including two positional – to the team which went down 54:19 to Northampton Saints on Friday.
15. Yury Kushnarev – VVA-Podmoskovye (Monino), 14. Denis Simplikevich – Enisey-STM (Krasnoyarsk), 13. Sergey Trishin – VVA-Podmoskovye (Monino), 12. Igor Galinovsky -Krasniy Yar (Krasnoyarsk), 11. Igor Klyuchnikov – VVA-Podmoskovye (Monino), 10. Konstantin Rachkov – Stade Phoceen (France), 9. Andrey Bykanov – Slava-ShVSM (Moscow), 1. Vladimir Botvinnikov – Enisey-STM (Krasnoyarsk), 2. Valeriy Tsnobiladze – Novokuznetsk (Novokuznetsk), 3. Alexander Khrokin – VVA-Podmoskovye (Monino), 4. Alexander Voytov – VVA-Podmoskovye (Monino), 5. Denis Antonov – Slava-ShVSM (Moscow), 6. Kirill Kushnarev – VVA-Podmoskovye (Monino), 7. Andrey Garbuzov -Krasniy Yar (Krasnoyarsk), 8. Viatcheslav Grachev – Bizanos (France),
Replacements
Evgeny Matveev, Alexey Travkin, Kirill Kopeshkin, Andrey Temnov, Artem Fatakhov, Alexander Yanyushkin, Sergey Sugrobov, Mikhail Babaev, Andrey Kuzin
