Ulster’s Robert Baloucoune eager to make up for lost time

The speedster had scored three tries in his last three games before the season was suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Baloucoune’s last touchdown came against the Cheetahs on February 22, 2020 - his last game until he came on as a second-half replacement in last Friday night’s win over the Ospreys.

The Enniskillen player starts against Leinster on Friday night at Kingspan Stadium.

“It’s always great to be back on the pitch, it was frustrating having such a long period out but also having a second injury on top of the hamstring,” said Baloucoune.

“Doing my ankle whenever I was getting back in the swing of things in training, it was frustrating but I’m back now, happy to be playing and I can’t really complain.”

The winger explained the injury happened in a training match.

“Just in that practice match, I got caught in a bad position when I was over the ball. I got caught badly and the hamstring went,” he said.

“I didn’t think it was actually that bad at the time but obviously it was. It wasn’t sore at the time but by that night it was pretty bad, it was getting sore and then the scan showed up that it was ripped of the bone,” added Baloucoune.

“I was really disappointed obviously, we’d been training for ages and then just as we were coming into matches, over all the individual training, it was disappointing; I just had to focus on the rehab and getting back as soon as I could.

“It maybe didn’t feel as long because there wasn’t much going on during the lockdown period.

“Nobody else was really doing anything else at the time either. I wasn’t really missing out on anything but then when the games are on and you’re missing matches, you’re missing training.

“Everyone else is coming in on a Monday sore from the weekend, that’s when it hits home that you’re missing out on what everyone else is doing.”

Baloucoune admitted he found the first few weeks of rehabilitation particularly tough.

“Those first few weeks of rehab, you can’t really move, it’s pretty sore almost all of the time.

“Just doing those bits of rehab, you can feel how tight it is, and you’re definitely apprehensive about it.

“You’re thinking will I get my speed back? Will I have the same strength in the hammy that I had before? Every week, I could feel it building up, that strength, that endurance, I was able to get it back to 90mpre cent even after those first few weeks so I was quite positive about it then.”

Baloucoune has scored 12 tries in 22 Ulster appearances and he is hoping to help the side topple Leinster to keep their hopes of reaching the Pro14 final alive.

“It’s our opportunity just to show a performance, it keeps us as having the most wins,” he said.

“We’re just focussing on ourselves and that means beating Leinster and putting out a good performance.

“We always back ourselves, especially at home, even against Leinster. We’ve got the players, we showed a bit of that against Ospreys when we were able to play a bit more ball and move it.

“We’ll be looking to come out hard and put Leinster on the back foot from the start.”

Ulster: (15-9) Michael Lowry, Robert Baloucoune, James Hume, Stuart McCloskey, Jacob Stockdale, Ian Madigan, John Cooney; (1-8) Eric O’Sullivan, John Andrew, Tom O’Toole, Alan O’Connor, Kieran Treadwell, Nick Timoney, Jordi Murphy (C), Marcell Coetzee.

Replacements: Adam McBurney, Andrew Warwick, Marty Moore, Cormac Izuchukwu, Sean Reidy, Alby Mathewson, Stewart Moore, Rob Lyttle.

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