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CHANGING FORTUNES
ALTERED AMBITIONS
by ROD
NAWN
VISITS by Leicester to Belfast have provided Ulster Rugby fans
with some of their most fervently memorable days – and there are
reasons aplenty to believe this evening’s Champions Cup game
could add further lustre to the archive.
46
ULSTER
RUGBY
www. ulster rugby.comKingspan Stadium will be packed to the rafters
– if such a modern arena has such things!
– with supporters from both clubs seeking
evidence for contrasting but equally important
ambitions.
Neil Doak and Richard Cockerill are in charge
of sides brimming with international quality,
and each has faced many challenging hurdles
in this season of sudden changes in fortune.
Both coaches have been confronted
particularly by the sort of injury toll usually
associated with unregulated bare-knuckled
boxing, but to the immense credit of both
they have accepted the loss of key players
for protracted periods with the stoicism that
comes with being soaked in the realities of a
professional contact sport.
Cockerill, unlikely though it might seem
concerning someone who’s been such a
constant at Welford Road, was just a few
months ago the steward of a team struggling
to make an impact in the Aviva Premiership,
playing with a palpable lack of confidence and
ruing a queue to the treatment room which
meant young and inexperienced players were
thrust into the fire earlier than would have been
planned.
The Leicester fans, if not exactly crying out
for ‘scalps’, were unsettled as September and
October offered very little of comfort in league,
and not much more in the early European
contests.
The long-term absence of centre Manu Tuilagi
was one of the most obvious and critical blows
to a club used to being amongst the trophy-
chasing elite, and Cockerill’s frustration was
matched by that of England coach Stuart
Lancaster who has clearly seen the Samoan-
born three-quarter as the fulcrum of his World
Cup backline.
Ben and Tom Youngs were also ruled out
for lengthy periods, and most sides would
accept a scrum-half and hooker of genuine
international quality might just be missed. Tom
Croft and Geoff Parling, England players too,
had long spells in ‘rehab’, and with Toby Flood
exploring pastures new abroad the No.10
spot was being occupied by new faces to the
Midland giants.
Cockerill maintained that things would
improve, and they have, particularly in the
last two months, but the management at
Welford Road clearly went through some very
intense soul-searching, and when Paul Burke
left the coaching team some commentators
wondered if there were more severe fissures in
the structures.
But as fans and players, coaches and owners,
know – but oftimes forget –a few timely wins,
the return of some important players, and a
rediscovered confidence can swiftly erase any
doubts and without a smidgeon of remorse all
hail the club, the team, the staff in which belief
had always been total and unswerving!
Cockerill has been restored to unquestioned
authority, the players are once more producing
a brand of rugby Leicester traditionally plays:
combative, inventive, physically formidable,
instinctively positive.
A club which has so easily accommodated
the genius qualities of Les Cusworth, the
flying Underwood brothers and – more
recently – Geordan Murphy, is at ease with
itself once more, and contending in domestic
competition, as expected, and this evening
hoping it is on the cusp of qualification for the
knockout stages of the European Champions
Cup.
For Neil Doak’s Ulster the clouds of injury
to key players still hover, dulled further by
the astonishing toll picked up in Toulon last
weekend when Louis Ludik, Stuart Olding and
Paddy Jackson all picked up ‘knocks’ likely
to keep them out of action for several weeks.
They join the well-rehearsed contingent
already sidelined.
Doak, Jonny Bell and Allen Clarke would
have hoped for a real challenge in Europe
this season, but they have been undone to
a great extent by things way beyond their
control, and they’ve harnessed their resources
in the squad as best they could. This evening
the determination to win the game will be
undimmed, and the team which takes to the
Kingspan turf will rightly demand of itself a
victory which would bolster the fine home
record this year, and provide genuine evidence
that the PRO12 can offer tangible reward.
ROD NAWN