Ulster Rugby v Benetton Rugby

ROB HERRING: LECIESTER VICTORY A ‘MASSIVE TESTAMENT TO THE CHARACTER OF THE SQUAD’ Hooker Rob Herring may have played only 15 minutes of Ulster’s final pool game against Leicester Tigers last Saturday – but it’s an experience he’s not likely to forget in a hurry.

some victories, we can go into the quarter-final and then the last three PRO14 games with confidence.” “PRO14 is our bread and butter, and it’s actually the younger boys who are saying we have to step up now and make sure the level is the same. That’s brilliant because they understand how important this game is and what it means to wear the jersey.”

The Cape Town native, a 65th minute replacement for flanker Sean Reidy who succumbed to a hand injury, found himself far from his natural habitat in the front row, and playing not one – but three – unfamiliar positions. “I was at Number 8 in the defensive scrum, six in attacking lineouts and seven in defensive lineouts so it’s all a bit of a blur really,” he recalls. “Every lineout I had to ask the boys what I needed to do, but outside of the set-piece you just nail one of the players and try to make the impact that way.” “We’ve been close to the quarter-finals the last couple of years, so to get over the line this time and not rely on other teams’ results was massive. The pool we got this year was tough and we didn’t win any games by massive margins, but five victories is big.” “When we put it all out there and come together as a squad, we can be formidable.” With the Heineken Champions Cup now in abeyance until the final weekend of March, Herring insists the team are fully focused on climbing the Conference B table in the Guinness PRO14 – and believes the absence of key players due to the Six Nations will not prove as great an obstacle as in previous years. “There will be a few changes with boys going off for international duty, so now a few other boys will get the opportunity. I think while maybe in the past there would have been a dip in performance, with the culture we have now, there’s an expectation on the guys coming in. Now we talk about not just holding the jersey from someone, but taking the jersey and making it your own.” “In past years we’ve waited for the last four or five games and we’ve had to win all of those,” he explains. “We have five games coming up before the quarter-final, starting with Benetton, so during this block of games if we can get

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