Ciaran Donaghy
Richie Murphy has played down Ulster having a crisis at out-half before Saturday night’s European Challenge Cup last 16 clash with the Ospreys at Ravenhill.
James Humphreys (hamstring), Jack Murphy (ribs), Jake Flannery (shoulder) have all been described as injury doubts which would mean Nathan Doak starting at No10 against the Welsh region.
“We’re in a better position than we were at the start of last week,” Murphy explained.
“Jake trained fully on Tuesday, Jack took part in training on Tuesday and done quite a lot, done more than we probably thought he would do, and James, although he came off with a hamstring, it’s actually not as bad as probably first appeared.”
“So, we’ve a few more options at 10 than maybe it looks on face value.”
Doak won his first international cap against Wales and played 25 minutes at out-half after coming off the bench in the win over Zebre last weekend.
Murphy added: “Nathan is trying to drive standards around the place. We had given him the week off last week but we had obviously brought him back in late in order for the game.” “It’s nice this week to get everybody back together for the first time.”
“That’s because we had Stu (McCloskey) and Nick (Timoney) away the first week and then we had the other guys that played, Tom O’Toole and Tom Stewart, back in now.
“The group is back together for the first time and a real focus to this week and a big run into the end of the season.”
The Ospreys beat Ulster in the league at the end of February and Murphy is weary of the threat Mark Jones side will bring – especially around the breakdown.
“They are a very tough, dogged team, who really play for each other, defend hard, we’ve seen that three weeks ago when they beat us over there at their ground,” he explauned.
“I think if you’re not really good around the breakdown against the Ospreys, you’re in trouble.
“I think we had five scrum penalties, so making sure that’s good, our line-out was really good at the weekend.
“We’ve played some really good rugby in the Challenge Cup against some good so it’s exciting to go again”.