Ulster head coach Richie Murphy says he expects centre James Hume to be missing for “a number of weeks” after the centre was ruled out of the province’s season opener.<\/p>\n
Hume suffered a hamstring injury in training this week before Friday’s United Rugby Championship opener against Edinburgh at Affidea Stadium (19:45 BST). <\/p>\n
His absence will come as a major blow to Murphy, who is already missing midfield options Jude Postlethwaite and Stewart Moore through injury.<\/p>\n
Centre David Hawkshaw arrived during the summer.<\/p>\n
“James picked up a muscle injury during the week which was an awful pity because he’d put in a huge amount of work and was probably looking the fittest he’d looked in a number of years,” Murphy told BBC Sport NI.<\/p>\n
“It’s disappointing for James and for us as a team.<\/p>\n
“But one man goes down, the next man stands up so it’ll be an opportunity for someone else.”<\/p>\n
The Ulster coach added that the 28-year-old could return to action before the conclusion of the series of matches leading up to the break for Ireland’s November internationals.<\/p>\n
“He’ll be out for a number of weeks. It’s hard to say at the moment, it’s very early in that injury. There’s a possibility he’ll be back before the end of the block but we’re not sure at the moment.”<\/p>\n
A squad update issued by Ulster Rugby on Wednesday indicated that three other players – Juarno Augustus and summer signings Matthew Devine and Keynan Knox – had participated in team training after overcoming their respective injuries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ulster head coach Richie Murphy says he expects centre James Hume to be missing for “a number of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-780782","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\/780782","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=780782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}