Wales forward Faletau, 35, will play for Cardiff against Sharks in Durban on Friday (17:00 GMT), his first start since New Year’s Day and only his fourth of the season.<\/p>\n
Cardiff head to Kings Park looking to respond after last weekend’s heavy defeat by Bulls, with eight changes to the side. <\/p>\n
Faletau’s return comes after another spell on the sidelines, with a calf problem following a knee injury that ruled him out of Wales’ autumn campaign. <\/p>\n
And with those injuries, it is easy to forget how long he has been around. <\/p>\n
Faletau made his Wales debut 15 years ago and was part of a formidable back row alongside Dan Lydiate and Sam Warburton. <\/p>\n
It has been eight years since Warburton retired, but Faletau is still playing and still drawing admiration from team-mates.<\/p>\n
Mulder sees it up close.<\/p>\n
“His pick-up from the base of a scrum is incredible. He’s got so much explosive power,” Mulder said.<\/p>\n
“Offloads\u2026 I almost always know to be on his shoulder and to expect the ball. Sometimes I don’t even think he’ll get it away and he still gets it there.”<\/p>\n
And Mulder reckons Faletau still has the ability to compete at Test level.<\/p>\n
“I definitely believe so,” he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wales forward Faletau, 35, will play for Cardiff against Sharks in Durban on Friday (17:00 GMT), his first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-497976","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497976","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=497976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}