29-26 loss against Cardiff<\/a>, after throwing away a 14-point lead.<\/p>\n“Stuart has been training for the last few weeks. The idea was to slowly reintegrate him back in and he is fully fit now and ready to go,” Murphy told BBC Sport NI’s Nicola McCarthy.<\/p>\n
“He’s a player at the top of his game at the moment and with huge confidence.<\/p>\n
“That battle between him and whoever plays centre against him – that could be Robbie Henshaw, Rieko Ioane or Garry Ringrose – is exciting and there are loads of match-ups that are going to be exciting and it’s a really big opportunity for lots of players to put their hand up.”<\/p>\n
The match against the defending URC champions is the first inter-provincial derby of this season and Ulster will attempt to end Leinster’s three game unbeaten run against them.<\/p>\n
Ulster’s head coach also praised his side’s most recent signings, Juarno Augustus and Angus Bell, and believes that there is more to come from both forwards.<\/p>\n
“A great character and he has settled in well,” Murphy said when asked about Bell.<\/p>\n
“He is a world class ball carrying loose-head forward and the way we want to play the game, he really suits.<\/p>\n
“Himself and Juarno [Augustus] coming in has given us a new dimension in our forward pack. I don’t think we have seen the best of either of them yet, but the next couple of weeks it would be nice to see that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ulster head coach Richie Murphy says the returning Stuart McCloskey is a “player at the top of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-352505","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}