Ulster Rugby v Glasgow

COACHES CORNER: DWAYNE PEEL

Backs and Team Attack Coach, Dwayne Peel shares his thoughts on the challenge tonight.

How has training gone this week? The boys trained well this week. It’s a big game for us tonight so the preparation has been intense. We know the quality that Glasgow have got but we’ve performed well over the last few games and we’re looking to keep that momentum going. Following the defeat of Leinster by Benetton last weekend the Italians are now just one point behind Ulster - how has that affected your preparation? If I’m being totally honest it’s not something we’ve spoken about, we’ve just spoken about ourselves and that’s something which has been good for us this last couple of weeks. We’re in control of our own performance. We obviously want to look up, we understand that Edinburgh do need to slip up now but we can’t control that, all we can do is push forward. We’ve got two big games left and we've prepared as if we’ve got a lot at stake. Given the way the season has gone with some disappointing results, it must be encouraging that there is still plenty to play for? Yeah definitely. Having that buzz every week is good and it’s good to be still on the hunt coming down to the end of the season. Our away form hasn’t been as good as we’d have liked and there’s no secret of that so the performance in Edinburgh was excellent for us. It was a big and the intensity was really good and it put us back in the hunt now which is great. Hopefully we can stay in it because we’re starting to pick up a bit of momentum. If we can carry that through I think there will not be many sides that will fancy facing us going forward. How much confidence can the group take from the recent back to back wins? It’s been a great boost. The training intensity has been good this last few weeks and we’ve carried that through into our performances so to get back to back wins is great for the confidence of the group.

If you look at the Ospreys game as a whole, yeah we were disappointed with some aspects where we could have finished a lot of opportunities off better but we created a fair few and we were good value with the ball. The territory and possession stats were highly in our favour and defensively the boys were very good which shows a good level of effort from everyone. Has the accuracy in the key areas been a concern? It doesn’t worry me as such. It frustrates you a bit after the game, when you watch it back and think he could have finished that off a bit better so we work to fix it in training. After Edinburgh, our accuracy was very good, we got a couple of sniffs and we finished opportunities off well. So, it’s not a worry as such, it’s just a case of looking at it and identifying what we can do better which we have done in training. It’s just about focusing on the ball really.

COACHES CORNER

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