Ulster Rugby vs Cheetahs

ROD NAWN

This weekend has the potential to fill the glass of rugby cheer to overflowing, and this evening at Kingspan Stadium Ulster will hope to set a winning template for Ireland at Twickenham tomorrow! ULSTERNEEDTORUAN CHEETAHS’ HOPES

be confident that wins and vital league points can and should be secured tonight, then against Benetton next week in Italy before a further three-week break for the squad. As the crowd looks forward to welcoming Ruan Pienaar back ‘home’, the warmth of that greeting will be undiluted but it will not include a hope that he reprises his many acts of match-winning genius for his new South African club! His seven-year spell with Ulster is viewed as a fairy-tale relationship, the Springboks pivot turning in man-of-the-match performances, it seemed, on a weekly basis. Pienaar departed in 2017; it was a traumatic and emotional parting of the ways, but Ruan made it clear that he fully intended to return and make his home here. He took up a lucrative offer to play in France for Montpellier and we all enviously monitored his career in the Top 14, hoping that as his career came to an end he’d become a fixture in the Ulster coaching box! That grand plan may have been tragically derailed by the loss of his sister Rene in a fatal road crash in his homeland a year ago. Ruan was released on compassionate grounds by the French club and his priority was his extended family and, particularly, his sister’s children. The Cheetahs offered a route back to first-class rugby and Bloemfontein is his nearby sporting home now. The club’s huge improvement in performance this season is not just down to the presence of one of the finest No. 9s the world has ever seen, but coupled with good, directed

But first things first, and after what seems an eternity Guinness PRO14 battle returns to Belfast, and the visit of the Cheetahs provides plenty of pre-match discussion points. Most important of all is the expectation that the home side can put last week’s rather surprising loss at the Ospreys into a more positive perspective. Currently lying second only to runaway Leinster in Conference A, Dan McFarland has shrewdly guided Ulster to within striking distance of the all-important PRO14 play-offs – and a Champions Cup quarter-final – but he’ll be acutely aware of the challenge in the league from tonight’s free-running visitors and a revitalised Glasgow. In short, he’ll expect and demand a win this evening, and as he navigates the governing body’s player management scheme he understands, like all the Irish Provinces’ coaches, that his team must focus on the opportunities and not the absence of those on Ireland duty. Some of those who trooped off the sodden Liberty Stadium pitch last weekend will know that given their chance against the Ospreys they possibly didn’t perform as they can. Tonight, in front of an increasingly supportive Kingspan Stadium crowd, the side McFarland fields knows its responsibility to him and to the fans. Matches during the Six Nations throw up different challenges to every team, and McFarland and his gifted coaching group will

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