Ulster Rugby vs Scarlets

As David Shanahan sits on the verge of earning his 50th cap for Ulster, we spoke to him about some of his personal highlights to date, working with Dwayne Peel and the Scarlets’ threat. DAVID SHANAHAN

it. Most scrum-halves worth their salt run decent support lines, so I put it down to our team making good line breaks rather than myself doing anything particularly well.”

The Dublin-born scrum-half already has some stand-out memories from his 49 previous games in an Ulster jersey. “Your first cap is always memorable as well as your first start,” he said. “My first start was against Exeter in a Champions Cup game; that was a momentous day for me. Playing in Europe is fantastic - last season’s Champions Cup win against Racing 92 was one of my favourite games and it was brilliant to be involved.” Working with Ulster’s Assistant Coach, Dwayne Peel, he has found to be hugely beneficial for his own development, especially considering Peel played scrum-half at the highest level. “Dwayne’s quality and British & Irish Lions experience is really helpful. He knows what it’s like to be a 9 and what we go through. If I do something in a situation, he’ll be able to empathise. “At the same time though, he pushes all the scrum-halves hard to be better players because he wants the best from us - he’s great.” The 26-year-old is renowned for running superb support lines, often scoring tries as a result. While this is something he works on in training, he modestly attributes his excellent strike rate to his team-mates. “It’s all about anticipation; it’s really easy in a team like ours which has dangerous players who can make a lot of line breaks, so you could say I’m feeding off their scraps. When someone like Jacob Stockdale or Will Addison get on the ball, you hedge your bets and go for

Spirits in the Ulster squad are high after two crucial wins in the Heineken Champions Cup against Bath away and Clermont at home, and Shanahan feels it can only be a positive that there is still room to improve. “Winning your first two European games – and you can’t lose many to qualify for the knock- out stages – we’re delighted about, especially the Clermont game as they’re one of the best teams in Europe. We like to think we made them look quite ordinary, but we still think we have more shots to fire. We’re doing some things really well but we’ve a lot of things in our armoury that we have yet to show.” Ulster’s focus turns back to the Guinness PRO14 on Friday, and although Ulster won’t let the Scarlets dictate the style of game they want to play, the scrum-half is conscious that Ulster’s defence will have to be watertight against one of the best attacking sides in the competition. “We try to play our own game, whoever we play against, but Scarlets pose a lot of threats and are one of the best attacking teams in the league and have been for the last few years. They won the PRO14 a few years ago; they still have that core team and play heads-up rugby, so defensively, we’ll have to be ready for that. Attacking-wise, we try to play our own brand of rugby, whoever the opposition, and it just happens to be Scarlets so hopefully we’ll be able to put together a plan and a performance that will get the job done.”

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