Ciaran Donaghy
Stuart McCloskey is eager to bring his international form onto the European stage for Ulster after being shortlisted as the Six Nations Player of the Tournament.
McCloskey played every minute of Ireland’s campaign and now back in the Ulster midfield, he is hoping to help the side overcome the Ospreys at Ravenhill on Saturday night and reach the European Challenge Cup quarter-finals after arguably the best two months of his career.
McCloskey said: “I touch the ball a lot, so yeah, I’d like to think people had a bit of respect for my game before this, not just the last six, seven weeks. I didn’t know I had that in my locker, to be honest.”
“It was a great Six Nations feels like a while ago now, but an amazing sort of seven weeks together as a group, especially turning around after the first game and nearly winning the whole thing in the end.
“Obviously [we] won the Triple Crown, but probably on a personal level… [I] probably couldn’t have saw it going as well as it did, but yeah, I take it.
“I’ve played for Ireland 29 times now, and I played all the games; I played three of the first games as a Grand Slam before I got injured a few years ago.
“I always knew if I just gave it a good run of games, [I] could hopefully put in a few good performances, and thankfully got a good run of games there, took a lot of positives from the Autumn Series, even though I got injured, and then I was playing well here at Ulster, and sort of let into the whole thing… come out well in the tournament.”
McCloskey won’t be doing anything different at Ulster from Ireland camp.
“It’s obviously been played slightly differently here, but it’s a lot of the same things: just come back and try to integrate back in, and play the same way as I was here before I left. There’s obviously going to be [some] teething problems. You see guys come back in for all the provinces, it doesn’t just click straight away, just because of relationships, you get a feel of that training.
“When you don’t train with a team for eight weeks, they’ve got eight weeks, even the calls don’t come quite as quickly, but we got back into it well at the weekend.
“I think a few of the guys that came back from camp actually played well in that Connacht game, even though it was a loss, but yeah, let’s think we’ll get most of us back in the field together this week, and hopefully get a bit of continuity.”
After three wins from their last six games and everyone back at Ravenhill, McCloskey is hoping Ulster can hit top form going into the business end of the season.
“I think probably, before the Six Nations, I thought we were still going well,” he added. “It’s been probably a lot of ins and outs and different personnel coming in the last sort of eight weeks, and we’ve got a few good results, but it’s been patchy.
“I’d say teams are probably taking notice a bit more, where they probably weren’t at the start of the season.”
“But I do think if we execute our stuff well, there’s not a lot you can do, and I suppose any team would say that, if you function your attack well and you do your jobs well, there’s not a lot defences can do these days.”