Richie Murphy confident Ulster squad can cope with silverware challenge on two fronts

If Ulster go all the way in both the United Rugby Championship and the European Challenge Cup they face 14 consecutive games starting away to Edinburgh on Friday night.

“Interesting sort of couple of months ahead there's no doubt, we've put ourselves into a position from the work earlier on in the year that we can sort of look forward and try to plot our way through the next number of weeks,” said Murphy.

“Pretty fit squad, which is massive when it comes to this time of the year. This time last year we were depleted but we get the Irish guys back after next week and what we have here, we look forward to an exciting run-in and make sure we take each week as it comes, and really try and do the best we can.

“There's definitely a buzz in the squad. Competition for places is growing and that's exactly what we always said that we wanted to do, so there'll be a few selection headaches for this week, and there's also a couple of guys within our squad coming up from underneath who are starting to put pressure on guys in front of them.

“So, in that regard, it's exciting. Points at this time of the season are really important, we go to Edinburgh this weekend, really tough task.

“We had a big defeat over there at the last match last year but we feel like we've come on a long way since then, so it's really important that we get it right.”

With such a potentially heavy workload Murphy knows he will have to rotate his squad at certain points during the run-in.

“You can't play 14 weeks in a row,” he said. “If we pick the same team every week, we won't be standing in 14 weeks' time, we'll be broken.

“Players train and play, and on the back of their training performance and their playing performances and how they prepare themselves, opportunity arises to get themselves in the team.

“There's a natural rotation that needs to happen within a few weeks of a team being the same team playing each time.”

“That's still the case now as it was early on in the season. What we probably know a little bit more about is what can we expect from the players that we are picking from the work that they've done early on in the season, from the work they've done in training.

"We're a little bit wiser in relation to what combinations fit, when we need to play our full team, our best team, and then what little changes we can make around that in order to keep people fresh, and make sure that we're still very competitive in those games.”

Murphy was delighted to retain the services of back-row David McCann, who penned a new two-year deal to stay at Ravenhill.

“Dave has been excellent this year, plays all three different positions in the back row,” he added. “He's the constant member within that team.

“His durability is excellent and hopefully he can keep that going, but he's been a really key member to our squad this year, so getting him re-signed is good business by Rory Best.”