Ireland wing Rob Baloucoune said he will “take every opportunity” after his “surprise” involvement in the squad ahead of the match against England (14:10 GMT).<\/p>\n
Baloucoune had not featured for Ireland since November 2022 due to injury before starting and scoring against Italy in last week’s Six Nations action.<\/p>\n
The wing only played twice for Ulster last season after an injury-impacted year and missed this season’s opener due to an ankle injury.<\/p>\n
Since returning, he has been in great form and has made a huge impact during Ulster’s promising United Rugby Championship [URC] season so far.<\/p>\n
“To be honest, yeah probably,” Baloucoune replied when asked if he thought he might not get another opportunity to play at international level.<\/p>\n
“It had been a while and playing for Ulster even looked a bit dreadful. I got a good run of games this season, was playing well and the team were playing well which helped my ability to get back into the game and scoring tries always helps.<\/p>\n
“I was surprised to be in camp so I took the opportunity to play the game [against Italy] and I will take every opportunity I can get.”<\/p>\n
Last campaign, Baloucoune returned from a long-term hamstring injury in March before suffering another set-back shortly after, which sidelined him until October.<\/p>\n
Since his comeback, he has registered six tries for Richie Murphy’s side, who sit fourth in the URC.<\/p>\n
“Last year was probably my toughest year, I had quite a number of big setbacks,” he continued. <\/p>\n
“I had a couple times nearly come back playing and then got pushed back. I had injuries over the years and I try to get back to as fit as I can. I try to focus on parts of my game, like handling, that I can try improve when injured. <\/p>\n
“It can be tough, but I try set markers for where I want to be and I feel like if you have a goal in place, you can always track it and get back into it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland wing Rob Baloucoune said he will “take every opportunity” after his “surprise” involvement in the squad ahead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-440633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}