Ward wants Ulster fans to stand up

For a team determined to finally shake off the burden of a famous victory, Ulster’s class of 2012 could well do with their supporters repeating their feats of 1999 when they face Edinburgh on Saturday at a packed Aviva Stadium.

It is 13 years since the province has graced a Heineken Cup semi-final but a home draw this weekend, sends the Ulstermen back to the scene of their final success over Colomiers at the old Lansdowne Road.

Andy Ward was part of the Ulster back row that season and he well remembers the effect of the massed ranks of supporters who made the journey to bolster the effort against a crack French outfit.

“It’s funny, the team came down on the Thursday for the match on the Saturday, so we missed a lot of the hype,” Ward said this week as he previewed this Saturday’s game for Sky Sports.

“It wasn’t really until the morning of the match, we were staying at the Berkeley Court Hotel and the boys were getting up in the morning and they couldn’t believe the numbers at nine o’clock in the morning outside the hotel.

“Someone said the last person out of Belfast had to turn the lights out back then and I don’t think it will be too dissimilar this weekend.”

That is certainly Ulster Rugby’s plan with the province expecting at least 40,000 of the 50,000-capacity stadium singing “Stand Up For The Ulster Men” at the tops of their voices to drown out an estimated 5,000-strong Scottish contingent.

However, former Ireland back row Ward has warned his successors in the Ulster jersey not to get too carried away with the day as an event.

“I can see it being a difficult day for Edinburgh. Ulster will see it pretty much as a home game, the support will be phenomenal.

“I think the key ingredient for the players and the coaches this week is to make sure that guys don’t play the occasion and actually play the match. There’s a danger you can get lost in the game and so it’s a key ingredient but the senior players will take charge and they will be a lot of big guys down there who will have been in these scenarios before.”

Chris Henry is hoping to be in the back row once occupied by Ward on Saturday evening, should he recover from an ankle sprain picked up last Friday against Leinster at Ravenhill. He was at Lansdowne in ’99, a 14-year-old cheering on his heroes, and he knows the value of some vociferous support, particularly having been on the receiving end of some in last year’s quarter-final and this.

“I was in the top tier of the stand with my dad holding a mini rugby ball,” Henry said. “Now, to put ourselves in the position of being one step away from a Heineken Cup final, is incredible.

“When you are mentally and physically wrecked, the crowd helps you to find something extra. When you need to dig deeper than ever before, as we did in Munster in the quarter-finals, then the fans can be invaluable in helping you to find something.”

If an Aviva effect is going to be a factor in buoying Ulster, Edinburgh fly-half Greig Laidlaw said he is fully prepared to negate it. “It would be good to see as many Edinburgh fans travelling as possible, but as long as Ulster fans aren’t allowed on the pitch they will only have 15 players, and that’s the focus for us,” Laidlaw said.

“Our fans were brilliant against Toulouse [in the quarter-final at Murrayfield] and I believe there is quite a lot travelling over and they will be as loud as they can be, and hopefully we will give them something to shout about.

“We know they’re noisy at Ravenhill and they’ll be able to just jump on buses and trains and down to Dublin, but it’s about us as a group of players not worrying too much about the crowd.

“There is a lot getting mentioned about the crowd, as it was before the quarter-final, and it is brilliant to be playing in front of these crowds, but what matters is what we

do when we play the game, and not the surroundings.”