Ulster Rugby vs Bath

“This season, we’ve had that 9, 10, 12, 13 unit playing most games with John Cooney who’s probably the best 9 in Europe at the moment. He’s controlling us well and having a great season. There are lots of great combinations across the squad and I think it comes from the team playing well if players get regular game time. You can see that confidence is building and as a group it all comes together. There’s a lot of competition - there will be times when we swap about and new combinations are formed. It’s going pretty well for us.” With Ulster now needing a win to guarantee a place in the Heineken Champions Cup quarter-finals, the centre knows that despite Ulster’s opponents Bath being out of the running, they cannot get ahead of themselves. “Bath have a lot of world-class players with nothing to lose in this competition. That can lead to some trouble for us, so we won’t get complacent. This is like a cup final because we need to win to make it to the quarter-finals, which is where we want to be. We want to get as high up the top 8 seedings as possible and we have to win this game to do that.” McCloskey is particularly excited about the prospect of playing such a decisive European game in front of another bumper home crowd. “In the last two sell-out home games, we got the try bonus point so there has to be something said about how important it is for us! Over the years, the support has been brilliant; even during the tough times, the fans have been there for us and we want to give something back to repay their loyalty.”

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