Ireland quartet return to Ulster for Pro14 clash with Ospreys

Props Jack McGrath, Tom O’Toole, Billy Burns and Stuart McCloskey haven’t had any game time during the first two rounds of the Six Nations and Ireland coach Andy Farrell released them back to Ulster on Monday.

“They’ve been away training hard with Ireland and haven’t got game minutes, so some of them could do with games,” said McFarland.

“The very fact they’re away with Ireland proves they’re good players, so they’ll be involved at some level this week.

The coach had positive news on the injury front.

“Marty Moore has come along, he’ll be available for selection this weekend,” conirmed McFarland.

“Louis Ludik and Mike Lowry will be coming back into the frame for selection whether we play them this week or not is another matter, it might be this week, it might be next week.”

After playing 13 consecutive week’s McFarland has had time to reflect on Ulster’s season during the month break.

“We put ourselves in a good position with a quarter-final in the Champions Cup having won five games,” he said.

“We would have liked a home quarter-final but that would have made us one of the top four teams in Europe currently and we probably weren’t good enough to do that, I’ll take top eight.

“We relish the fact we’re going to Toulouse and that’s going to be a huge challenge, but we want to face those kinds of challenges.

“In the Pro14 Leinster are a good chunk ahead of us and if we want to chase them down then we need them to slip up, which doesn’t look likely at the moment.

“We’re in a hunt for those other two places, and the closest guys to us are the Cheetahs then we’ve got Glasgow, who had a tough time during the World Cup but now are looking good.

“We’re in a position where we have to keep winning, going to the Ospreys this week, who I’m sure have regathered and pulled together as a group and it’ll be terrible conditions.

“I’m sure it’s going to be a tough test for us.”

The Ospreys are bottom of Conference A having won only one of their nine games.

The Welsh region have also changed their coach mid-season, but despite the 27-point gap between the teams in the table McFarland is expecting a tough night in Swansea.

“We look at what they are capable of and what their players are capable of,” he said.

“We know they have the players to be a very good team because they have caused a lot of teams a lot of trouble in the not too distant past.

“They have also played well in games for periods without actually putting it together for the whole game .

“So the psychology is that we know we have to be near our best or at our best to win most games.

“This is February in Swansea there’s going to 50 mph winds and it’s going to be lashing with rain so if we’re a few scores up after 20 minutes that would be awesome.

“I suspect it will be pretty tight and we’ll be battling all the way through this game because points will be at a premium, exactly like last year.”