Ulster Rugby vs Leinster

ARTICLE BY ROD NAWN FREELANCE JOURNALIST AND SPORTS ENTHUSIAST @RODNAWN1

Franco van der Merwe, Iain Henderson, and Jamie Heaslip will want set-piece supremacy primarily, and recently Ulster’s occasional fragility at scrum-time has been successfully addressed, and provided there is care and structure at the breakdown the home side looks the more consistent unit. We love to speculate on what might happen, who might be the key influence on the 80 minutes, and there are 46 players on show, each of whom could be the catalyst for what would be a pivotal afternoon for one of the sides. In Ulster this year the emergence of Stuart McCloskey, of Kyle McCall, Sean Reidy and Rory Scholes has offered very real reason to believe the present – and the important future – teams will compete effectively and consistently, that their talents have been forged in the white heat of serious competition and the visit of Leinster, fierce Inter-Pro rivals as well as PRO12 contenders too, will not find these younger players wanting. Add to that the return to health of Iain Henderson, and Stuart Olding – internationals both – and the pool of experience and ‘nous’ of Best, Rob Herring, Ricky Lutton, Callum Black, Robbie Diack, Chris Henry, Roger Wilson, Andrew Trimble, Craig Gilroy, Darren Cave, Paul Marshall, the incomparable Ruan Pienaar and so many more - and Ulster fans rightly should share a ‘feel-good factor’. And time may have beaten his recovery but what a game it would be was that colourful, engaging and crowd-rousing Nick Williams able to add his rumbustious presence to proceedings on his last appearance in an Ulster jersey at Kingspan Stadium? Madigan, Fitzgerald, Reddan, Healy and Ruddock, amongst others travelling from Dublin, will have firm ideas of a rather different outcome than the one that the sell-out home crowd will want and urge from their favourites. The rewards of the 80 minutes this afternoon are plain and seductive, and even at the final whistle there is one more weekend of the Guinness PRO12’s ‘regular’ season which could become truly critical to Ulster’s quest to reap the harvest so much hard work deserves, and which will sate the appetite of supporters who have waited – not perhaps always patiently! – for their investment in terms of loyalty, time and hopes bring genuine success. The target is to extend the campaign into May, to reach the semi- finals, and it could be around five o’clock next Saturday, after the game with the Ospreys in Wales, that we will all know if the squad has taken a key step towards a trophy. A league title was won at the Liberty Stadium a decade ago with a last-gasp drop goal from a certain David Humphreys. An omen? Let’s first prepare to give full voice to create a thunderous welcome to Leinster this Saturday afternoon. This is what a certain Scot labelled ‘squeaky bum time’, what the more elegant rugby enthusiast might call something else. Pure Drama!

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