McLaughlin hoping to lead Ulster out of the wilderness

BRIAN McLAUGHLIN did his best yesterday to dance around the importance of this coming week for Ulster.

He rummaged through his vocabulary in a doomed attempt to disguise Saturday’s game in the cloak of just another routine fixture but it was all to no avail. After so long in the wings, Ulster are finally back on centre stage.

As everyone knows, the province has exited the Heineken Cup at the group stages on eleven successive occasions since they won the thing outright back in 1999. Now, finally, they find themselves primed to end that embarrassing streak.