Ciaran Donaghy
Ulster’s Richie Murphy feels playing every week has provided a nice headache as he primes his squad to challenge on two fronts for silverware.
After qualifying for the European Challenge Cup by beating La Rochelle last weekend, Ulster will play 10 consecutive games and that could rise by another four if they beat Exeter and go all the way to the URC final.
“It’s definitely a headache in relation to how we manage our squad, manage our team,” said the head coach. “The other thing was the Edinburgh game getting stuck at the start of this where early on in the season you were kind of looking at it going that being pushed back, that’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world.
“Now it’s an extra game, so we’re looking at it week to week, we’re assessing the needs of the squad, the fitness of the squad, how the lads are feeling, how they’re turning up, how they’re training and we’re trying to sort of adapt each week. “The next couple of weeks is going to be huge for us and we’re going to be under a lot of pressure because we’re playing a lot of really top teams…but that’s exactly where you want to be, isn’t it?
“It’s a really nice headache.”
“Could we do with a break? Possibly…but nobody in our team room is looking for a break, they’re all excited and looking to try and get into the team for this weekend to play Leinster.”
Ulster return to domestic duty on Friday night and face a Leinster side a place and a point below them in the URC table.
Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Laszlo Geczo
“Leinster are probably the URC’s most consistent team over the number of years that they’ve been there,” said Murphy. “Started to change a little bit over the last couple of weeks, starting to play a little bit more…they’ll be a real test coming up here to Ravenhill. Obviously our last inter-pro probably didn’t go that well here against Connacht, so it’s really important that we bounce back.”
Leinster have lost five league games this season but shown a recent return to form in the Champions Cup.
“They have a very strong squad, this time of year they’ve always been sort of famous for how they can rotate and performance stays fairly high,” said Murphy. “We can be pretty sure that the team that they send up will be full of top-class players and Irish internationals.”
He added: “And also will be coming to do a job on us because, at the end of the day, we’re one point ahead of them in the league and I suppose whoever doesn’t win at the weekend will end up out of the top four.”
The weather forecast for Friday isn’t meant to be good but after the last two weeks Ulster should be acclimatised.
“I think the management of the game (La Rochelle) and how we controlled field position, our accuracy in the opposition 22, our fight in our own 22 when people get in there, I think that was really pleasing,” said Murphy. “So, yeah, probably a little bit more used to playing in those bad conditions over the last couple of weeks.
“There was obviously a rotated La Rochelle team, which people had written off.
“It’s very difficult to play a team like that in conditions like that, especially with the size of their forward pack that they sent out…I thought our forwards done it extremely well.”