For Sean Lamont, the new season has more than ordinary significance. Not only does it mark Northampton's return to the Guinness Premiership after a year in National League One, the club's opening match against Worcester Warriors at Franklin's Gardens on Sunday will be Lamont's first game of competitive rugby in ten months.

The Scotland wing, who must be a good bet to tour South Africa with the Lions next summer, has not played a competitive match since November 3 last year, when he damaged a ligament in his right knee so badly against Pertemps Bees that he required a reconstruction. The operation took place in mid-December, Lamont missed this year's RBS Six Nations Championship and Scotland's series in Argentina in June and feels very much the new boy.

Given that he is 27 and has 35 caps, it should not be so, but Lamont observed that, since returning home after the 2007 World Cup, he has had little more than 40 minutes of rugby in which to impress Jim Mallinder and Dorian West, the coaches, who settled into their stride with Northampton last season. “To them, I haven't really proved myself,” Lamont said, and that is where his attention is focused.

Lamont, a player who was released by Rotherham after his first year in the professional game, is aware that serious knee surgery leaves him having to convince himself that all is well. “I was feeling a bit over-rugbyed after the World Cup,” Lamont said, which is no surprise after three heavy-duty seasons in succession.

The injury break, which involved a month with Bill Knowles, the noted knee specialist, in Killington, Vermont, was also when he became a father and, coincidentally, his younger brother Rory, the Sale Sharks and Scotland wing, picked up a facial injury that cost him the last two months of the season.

“I know I'm a little tentative going into contact, but medically everything is sound and the knee is stronger than before,” Sean said. “You still have to learn to completely forget what happened and it does seem as though I'm starting from scratch. You have to deserve your place with your club before you can think about your country.”

Mallinder considers Lamont's recovery is like having a new and talented player available alongside the 12 newcomers to the club. “What has been encouraging for us is that Sean has worked hard in rehab and has clearly wanted to play,” the director of rugby said. “He won't get back to form just like that, but once he got the all-clear he threw everything at it. Nothing was held back.”

The New Zealand Rugby Union has confirmed the venues for the knockout matches of the 2011 World Cup. Two quarter-finals will be played at Westpac Stadium, Wellington (capacity 39,500) and two at Ami Stadium, Christchurch (41,000). The last four games, including the bronze final, will be played at Eden Park in Auckland, where capacity will be 60,000 once refurbishments have been completed.

The Help for Heroes match at Twickenham on September 20, designed to raise funds for service personnel injured on active duty, will be supported by Sir Clive Woodward, who coached England to their 2003 World Cup success. “The Great Britain team won a huge number of medals [at the Olympic Games in Beijing] and arrived back to a hero's welcome,” Woodward, the director of elite performance for the British Olympic Association, said. “They and I would be the first to admit, however, that the real heroes are the ones who serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.”