Wicked whisper spurs on Trimble
A whisper in the ear at the start of match week has invariably meant disappointment for Kidney’s players and the Ulster back has been afforded far too many private sessions for his liking.
With Brian O’Driscoll absent until the summer and Keith Earls being seconded from out wide to fill the considerable gap, it was all but inevitable that the 27-year-old’s considerable candidacy would be impossible to ignore.
So it proved.
“The last six months I’ve felt like I’ve been playing quite well,” he said. “I’ve been enjoying my rugby, I’ve felt confident. I’ve just been banging the door trying to get starts. If you look back and you haven’t been given an opportunity you can complain and moan that it’s not your fault.
“But if you get an opportunity and you don’t take it you’ve got nobody else to blame but yourself and that’s why this weekend I just want to get out there and perform well. I just want to perform as well as I’ve been playing in a white shirt and hopefully I’ll take that opportunity.”
Anything approaching his form for Ulster and Ireland are in business.
Five tries in his last five games are testament to the threat he poses along the province’s right wing, with the second of his two in the game against Leicester — when he danced a merry jig around Alesana Tuilagi — the pick of the bunch.
That touchdown was achieved in traditional style for a winger by engineering the score in the bare minimum of space along the whitewash, but his horizons have expanded and he now sees the whole sward and not just its periphery as his playground.
“If you stay out there and wait for it, it generally doesn’t come. For me playing with Ulster, we’re trying to play an expansive game, put teams under pressure. Our phase play has come on in leaps and bounds in the last sort of three months.
“We’re really pleased with where we’re going and that sort of game plan, that sort of structure and that pattern suits me quite well. As far as I’m concerned, I just want to get into the game and get my hands on the ball and just run hard at people, look to find holes and that’s worked quite well for me so far.”
He switches over to the opposite tramline for the weekend’s date on Lansdowne Road and, though he states a preference for the other side, he has few qualms about being asked to wear the 11 shirt rather than the 14.
It was on the left that he featured for 80 minutes last March when Ireland gave their most complete performance of the 2011 Six Nations in the rout of England and it was there again that he was handed his only start of the World Cup against Russia.
Earls, as he will in two days’ time, featured at 13 that latter day in Rotorua but it seems considerably longer than the seven years it has actually been since Trimble made his debut at outside-centre for the visit of Australia to Dublin.
It is an international career that has blown hot then cold and now hot again and he will break into double figures for appearances in green in a single season when he takes to the turf this weekend with seven more games to come.
Trimble has never known what it is to approach a selection meeting confident in the knowledge that he would start. For him it has always been a case of keeping his fingers crossed but that can change if he avails of the opportunity his patience has earned for him now.
“The only way I can make that time come where I’m massively confident going into a selection meeting of being picked is to produce a big performance on Sunday, get picked and produce another big performance and have a massive Six Nations campaign.
“For me the first step of that is having a big one on Sunday.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
