Craig Gilroy on brink of landmark 200 caps for Ulster

Gilroy is hoping for a big season personally and for Ulster.

“There is a lot of competition and you really need to put your hand up to get into Dan’s team and he drives really high standards,” said Gilroy.

“I played for the A’s two weeks ago and had a good game for them and he rewarded me with the start against Treviso so I wanted to get all my prep done for that.”

“The A game was a chance for a lot of guys that hadn’t played a lot of rugby to get some minutes under their belt and I played the full 80.

“It was a game I was happy to be back at and no matter what team you face in Leinster it is always going to be a good standard of rugby, I was really looking forward to it and I really enjoyed the game,” Gilroy added.

“It is a clean start, it was the first game of the season and it was all positive.”

Gilroy has cited the need for consistency in order for Ulster to make real progress this season.

“We have to be consistent in the way we play and create our own atmosphere, the Ospreys will be high on confidence but every away game is a huge challenge and all points matter,” he said.

“We don’t dwell on last season, we won our away semi-final but you want to be in a position come the end of the season to get yourself home fixtures.”

Gilroy put in a huge defensive shift against the Italians last week and was also won a kick which started the move which eventually led to Stewart Moore’s try.

“Going after the ball in the air is a huge positive for us and something we have got a lot of reward out of, we got so much out of it last season that we want to take it into this season,” he said.

“There are a lot of things that can come together that can create chances like that, John Cooney’s box kick was on the money (and) it gave me a chance to get up and contest and we react and play of that, everyone has their role and part to play and that was a good example of it.”

After the disappointment of losing in both knockout games at the end of last season Gilroy was happy to take maximum points in the season-opener against Benetton.

“I’ll not lie, it has been a hurtful couple of weeks and some of those results that didn’t go our way, the season was looking so positive for us then within the space of two weeks it was no more and that was disappointing.

“When you have had two difficult losses you are always sort of looking for a game to put that right and I suppose we did that against Treviso with a bonus point win.”

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