ULSTER CENTRE STUART McCloskey can sum up his breakthrough year in a succinct sentence.
“Really happy with how the season’s gone, when I’ve actually been on the pitch playing.”
It’s been that sort of campaign. McCloskey began the season with just four Ulster caps to his name. But with injury to Jared Payne, Luke Marshall and Stuart Olding; his tackle-busting runs and service out of the tackle soon forced head coach Neil Doak to consider him as a first choice option at inside centre.
By December, however, with Ulster’s Champions Cup campaign swirling the drain, the centre suffered an elbow ligament injury.
The man we’ve come to know as the ‘Bangor Bulldozer’ recovered to help Ulster through the Six Nations period, but fell on the wrong side of the law and incurred a ban for his clear-out on Edinburgh’s Hamish Watson.
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“We wish,” he says with a laughs as The42 calls red cards a rare occurrence in the game.
Ulster have been dealt more than their fair share over the past 13 months. From the famous and much-debated Jared Payne to the lesser-spotted card flashed at Declan Fitzpatrick before the prop retired from the game with concussion problems.
Ulster are again dealing with the disciplinary committee this week after Iain Henderson was giving marching orders before his side snatched a draw with Munster. Things haven’t quite gotten bad enough in Belfast for there to be ready-made protocols on how players treat their team-mates after an early bath, so McCloskey wasn’t pushed to tell the dynamic forward to keep his chin up.
“Hendy’s a bit more experienced than me. I know how he feels. It was tough for him on Saturday after, but hopefully the right decision will be made at the hearing.”
McCloskey’s own hearing resulted in a four-week ban. Since then his breakthrough season has been tempered somewhat and he has been forced to make hay from the replacements bench. Still, from there he has managed to make his presence felt with big late carries to secure results against both Leinster and Munster.
Breaking tackles wasn’t always a natural part of his game though. The 6′ 3″ centre was a late bloomer. In fact, when he lined out for Bangor Grammar School in fifth year, he was a scrum-half. Then the growth spurt hit.
“In sixth year I was playing 10 and 12 — I just took a bit of a growth spurt and then all the strength and conditioning work I did in the academy and now senior is definitely helping.”
With a trip to Glasgow ahead of the 22-year-old gainline-maker, the odds are against Ulster claiming a home berth in the Pro12 semi-finals before the final at Kingspan Stadium.
With Ulster starting slowly in their last two outings against Leinster and Munster, adding McCloskey to the mix might give the northern province the impetus needed to win at a sold-out Scotstoun. It’s certainly not a venue McCloskey or his team-mates will fear this week or in a potential knock-out fixture the week after. Not that he’ll be distracted by permutations.
“[Against Munster] a lot of chances went begging and stuff like that there. If we had taken those, we should have won the game easy.
“Throughout the game we made a lot of line breaks our set plays were going well, starters were going well. It was just not being clinical at the end, stuff like that there is what we need to work on.
“If we take our chances we’ve a very good chance of winning this league.”
