Ulster Rugby v Harlequins

Nick Timoney made his first appearance of the season against the Dragons in September, delivering a powerful two-try performance that helped Ulster claim a 52-25 win. GETTING TO KNOW NICK TIMONEY

After an unfortunate injury, which forced him to the sidelines for a few weeks, Timoney made a dazzling return to form at home against Benetton and is now more determined than ever to earn a consistent place in the match day 23. Reflecting on his season to date, Timoney said, “It’s going OK so far. I had a bit of a slow start, I didn’t get really going until a few games in. I had my first start against the Dragons, which was a good experience and it went pretty well but then I got injured the week after. I was injured for maybe 8 or 9 weeks, which was a bit unfortunate timing wise. Getting to start again in my first game after injury was a real highlight as I’d thought it might take a bit longer to get back into the swing of things. I’m glad to be back playing and really enjoying it.” Timoney is one of six Abbey Insurance Academy players to have lined out for the senior side this season, and he believes the programme, led by Kieran Campbell, is ideal preparation for stepping up into the professional game. “Ultimately, the goal of the Academy is to get boys ready to play at senior level. The two are very much aligned and we trained with the senior squad quite a bit of the summer and that was really beneficial for me and a few of the other boys. “You’re starting to see more and more academy players getting opportunities, and when they do they are contributing well. I just want to keep getting better and keep pushing some of the more senior guys for a spot in the team. “There's tons of internationals at Ulster, really experienced back rows, but as I said there’s a lot of Academy players coming through so there’s a lot of competition for places at the moment. It's a really good environment for us at the moment as we’re all competing with each other, pushing each other and helping each other and I just want to continue to be a part of that.” Timoney also describes his experience of playing sevens for Ireland as beneficial for his development. “We were in the European Grand Prix last summer and ended up qualifying for the World Cup. We won two of the four legs but ended up finishing second over-all to Russia. It was a pretty cool

experience. Sevens helped me grow in a few ways that I hadn't been exposed to before so I think that was pretty good for me. The different skill-sets and that we used in training has helped me quite a bit at Ulster. Getting exposed to different levels of rugby and playing against really good players has really helped too." The 22-year-old got his first taste of European rugby when he started at the Stoop on Sunday and says it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. “Harlequins play a pretty expansive game. They play nice rugby to be fair to them and score a lot of tries off little kicks and trick plays. They didn't get a chance to show too much of that last Sunday, but the weather should be better this weekend, and they will pose a bigger threat. We’ll need to be ready for that but we’re looking forward to the challenge again. We think we play some pretty nice attacking rugby too. Our running game is up there with some of the best in Europe so we think we can score tries and attack teams, especially here at home. We’d like to think Kingspan Stadium is a tough place to come and teams will be dreading coming to us. We hope to give our fans a good show.”

NICK TIMONEY

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