Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Peel eyes surge up the table
DWAYNE PEEL hopes Ulster’s first back-to-back wins since Christmas can launch a late surge towards the knockout stages of the PRO14.
Friday’s crucial 8-0 win over Ospreys in Belfast backed up an impressive bonus point win over Edinburgh at Murrayfield.
It was Ulster’s first successive victories since beating Harlequins home and away in December.
Assistant coach Peel said: “Winning back to back is huge. In the last two weeks, the training intensity has been really good and we’ve carried that into games.
“To get that is great for the confidence of the group. The performance and win in Edinburgh was excellent for us because we had a few disappointing results before that. If you look at the Ospreys game, yeah we are disappointed in many aspects where we could have finished a lot of opportunities off but we created a fair few and were good value with the ball.”
With two fixtures to play – including Saturday’s rearranged game in hand at home to Glasgow – Ulster lie nine points behind Edinburgh who face
Glasgow in their final outing on April 28.
Edinburgh are strong favourites to nail down third spot in Conference B but a win this weekend would give Jono Gibbes men something to chase.
Peel said: “We’re starting to pick up a bit of momentum and being in the hunt is great and hopefully we can stay in it.”
Forward Matty Rea (leg injury) is sidelined as Ulster bid to extend their one point gap on Treviso who remain in contention for fourth place and the European Champions Cup play-off.