Bradley:We can trouble Ulster

Michael Bradley reckons his Edinburgh side can relish the freedom of being the only Heineken Cup semi-finalist not expected to progress to the decider.

The Cork native has guided a Scottish side to the last four of Europe’s premier club competition for the first time, ousting the tournament’s aristocrats Toulouse along the way. As a result, he sees today’s showdown with Ulster at the Aviva Stadium as something of a shot to nothing.

“There was a similar feeling to going into the Toulouse game. We’re excited about the fact that we’re at this stage of the tournament and competing, but we’re also very confident that if we play close to our best game we will trouble anybody, and Ulster are the target this weekend.

“For some reason we don’t feel we’re under as much pressure as Ulster are or Leinster or Clermont, because their expectations are that they will march onto the final.

“There is a potential for us not to have the same expectation from outside looking in, so there’s been an easier week for us in terms of an energy than it will have been for Ulster and that’s an advantage for us.”

Edinburgh are light on experience of the Heineken Cup’s knockout stages but with almost all of their starting XV boasting international caps, Bradley doesn’t foresee any difficulties.

“The Toulouse match was a good dry run for us in that sense. Obviously that was a friendly environment and this will be a hostile environment in the Aviva, so that’s something we’ve got to deal with at the start of the match.

“But you saw how Ulster dealt with it at Thomond Park – you get a good start and that normally takes care of it for a period of time. But I don’t really have a fear of the environment itself. We’ve got 11 full internationals and the other four players are quality players as well, so it’s not an issue.”

Ulster coach Brian McLaughlin has gambled somewhat in selecting rookie out-half Paddy Jackson. While Bradley stopped short of suggesting his troops will target the Ireland U20 captain, the former Connacht coach acknowledged the pressure Jackson will be under in his maiden Heineken Cup start.

“They have picked Paddy obviously because they think he’s the right man to get them over the line and we have information on Paddy. It won’t change the expectations we have of what Ulster will do, but it will probably bring into focus other elements of the game we think they will want to put pressure on us.

“They will probably try to take pressure off him at ten and switch to other aspects of their game, but that’s where we think they’ll go anyway so it doesn’t change our thought process.

“The issue for them is how he will react to the pressure of starting because he hasn’t got a lot of experience.”

Jackson has experienced campaigners around him who have helped Ulster inflict heavy defeats on Edinburgh during the RaboDirect Pro 12, but Bradley dismissed the notion that those games provide any sort of guideline as to how things will play out this time around.

“The side we’re putting out has significant changes to the teams that Ulster played, while Ulster have 13 or 14 of their starters from January so we’re very familiar with them and what they’ll be doing but they’ll have to do a bit of homework on us.

“I don’t take much out of the Pro12 matches except for the fact that Ulster were excellent when they got turnover ball and that’s one of the lessons we certainly did learn from those games. You can’t afford to over-play the ball and get caught in turnover situations because they were excellent at converting those, so that’s a key point for us.”