Ulster Rugby vs Dragons

It must be a massive honour to be named club captain? Absolutely. It’s not something I’d targeted in my career, so I was surprised when Les approached me and asked me to be captain along with Rob. I didn’t have to go away and think about it, it’s such a huge honour, especially when you look at the past captains. Rory is someone I would like to emulate. It’ll be tough to follow in his footsteps but myself and Rob are really up for the challenge and are very excited about it. Your family must be delighted? Yes, they’re all so pleased, regardless of their background and exposure to rugby, they all know what an honour it is to be named as captain and lead this team. It’s a big honour for both of us ANDREW TRIMBLE Q&A

How has pre-season training gone for you? It’s been up and down. I’ve had a few niggles which I’ve been working through and I’m getting there now. The boys have been training really hard and it’s all come together now, which we saw on Friday night against Northampton. It was a real reminder of where we’re at with our facilities, players, coaches, crowd – everything is up another level. It’s great to see all the hard work of preseason coming to a climax and putting a few tries in against Northampton. Obviously there are a few things to work on, there always will be with preseason games, but it’s a great point to launch us in to the season. We have to hit the ground running, we’re in for a tough start against the Dragons, we have to get going early – you don’t win the league in the last few games of the season, you start at week one. How do you think the team performed in the warm-up games? Great! There were a Charles Piutau obviously tore it up and reminded everybody how good he is. We’ve built a bit of excitement for the season ahead, I can’t think of anyone who didn’t have a good game. We have a lot of depth in the team - there were around 15 guys unavailable for selection against the full strength Northampton side and we still took them apart for 50 minutes and hung in long enough to deliver the win, so there’s a lot of positives. I’m sure you’re looking forward to getting stuck back in at Kingspan Stadium? Absolutely. Friday was a reminder of how great the atmosphere here is. When there’s a big match the home crowd really get the team going. If we turn up and perform well on Friday night we’re a really tough side to beat at home, this is our fortress. I’m excited to be a part of this, especially in a leadership role with Rob. lot of positives. Robert Lyttle’s kicking game on Friday night was fantastic – he proved he’s got a lot of strings to his bow and he’s a very talented player.

to lead the group of guys we have right now, there’s something very special about the potential we have this season, so we’re really looking forward to it. How have the fans reacted to the news? The fans have been supportive considering having a shared captaincy is slightly unorthodox. With

ANDREW TRIMBLE

a leader as strong and respected as Rory the tendency is for the team to always look to him to decide what to do. It’ll be good for the rest of us to take more ownership and lead the team together. We want to take the PRO12 and Champions Cup by the scruff of the neck and move it on. Taking ownership of this team as a group of individuals, friends, colleagues and players is how we want to move forward. How did Les break the news to you? He asked me to stay behind after a meeting, which is more often to deliver bad news than good news! I was racking my brains trying to work out what I’d done wrong but I thought I was whiter than white! He explained his idea to me about moving forward with two captains, which I thought was a great idea, so now I’m really looking forward to seeing what it looks like on the pitch.

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