Ulster Rugby vs Edinburgh

CHRISTMAS: Rugby is still busy for us over the Christmas period but I think we are planning to have an afternoon in the house on Christmas Eve as a family and on Christmas Day we alternate between our parents’ houses so this year I am at my in-laws, so I’m sure we will be well fed and well looked after. Eleanor, my little girl isn’t totally aware of Santa yet but she will be loving the Christmas tree and all the lights. We had a wee boy last Monday called Luke, not after Luke Marshall, we just liked the name. But I think if Luke here wasn’t as good a PAUL MARSHALL ON...

If the game is already going a certain way, you can come on to change things up and sometimes it helps the team and sometimes it doesn’t. I think when you come off the bench with nothing to lose, it can look like you are injecting a bit of energy into the side but the guys out there have been doing the hard graft for 50-60 minutes. So from our point of view, you want to try to add as much as you can to the team and I feel when I do get on I add something and try to contribute positively to the team effort. It’s our aim coming off the bench to be encouraging and add fresh impetus as best you can. THE NUMBER 9 JERSEY:

person, we might not have gone for it! It has been an exciting few weeks, mostly full of anticipation and then relief when he arrived safe and sound. He has been really good so far, sleeping a lot, I won’t be advising him to play rugby just yet, if he wants to grow up to be a Premiership footballer or professional golfer it would be a better retirement plan for me! A DISAPPOINTING FEW GAMES: Obviously Saracens are a top class side and we were disappointed with how that game went. It didn’t feel like we contributed enough to the game as we would have liked

PAUL MARSHALL

Ruan and myself get on well, both on and off the pitch. He is a good player and I would like to think that I also add a bit to the team so from that point of view we are different players. His kicking game is phenomenal and I have different attributes to him. I don’t try to play like him, I play the way I enjoy playing. We are different but if he’s doing well for the team, then I’m happy and if I’m doing well at something else then that’s good for the team and it gives the coaches options.

to. They have a fantastic kicking game and are good at putting you under pressure and we didn’t deal with it the way we would have liked to. Against Leinster at times we looked very comfortable with ball in hand and we looked comfortable in defence, but again we just didn’t quite have that added spark to finish them off and make use of the opportunities that we were given during the game. In big games like that one, you maybe only get three or four chances unlike other games were you could have five or six. So you have to take every chance you get and in the past couple of weeks we haven’t, so that’s

MAKING AMENDS V EDINBURGH: I think the crowd have been quiet the last couple of weeks if I’m honest, but I think that comes down to our performance. They buy into it when we play well and because we haven’t been firing on all cylinders, I think they have found it hard to get engaged. But that is very much up to us as to how we play, how we get the crowd on our side by our performance and hopefully this weekend we can start well to get the fans into the game and hopefully they will have something to enjoy as well as ourselves. There is a massive expectation on us now, because we have been putting in performances over the last few years so people expect us to win every game so losing at all it seen as unacceptable. People tend to jump off the bandwagon when we are not doing so well and jump back on when we are doing well so we have got to make sure we are doing well more consistently.

disappointing. FRESH LEGS:

The boys try immensely hard and sometimes its easier coming off the bench and creating a bit of pace in the game or bringing something different because you have nothing to lose in some cases.

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