Sheridan braced for tough Ulster test

The 23-year-old redhead sounds like a sport psychologist’s dream.

Throw any question you like at Cathal Sheridan, Munster’s emerging scrum-half, and he doesn’t seem in the slightest way nonplussed. For instance, suggest to him that he could never have visualised being a Munster star growing up some 150 miles away in Sligo.

“The difference between visualising it and becoming it are two very different things,” he states. “You always throw on the red top and kick a ball out the back. Whether you believe you are going to do it one day is a different thing. You keep the child in you in that aspect.”

Perhaps it’s going to be a dawdle for him to take on Ulster at Ravenhill tomorrow night after playing a major role in Munster’s Heineken Cup defeat of Perpignan at the Stade Aime Giral a few weeks ago.

He rationalises: “We will find out on Friday! I think it definitely gives you more confidence, you just have that bit of belief in yourself that if you go to a place like Perpignan and deal with what they have to throw at you.

“But, at the same time, you can’t be looking back to last week. You have to think this is a different team, different set-up, different week, so you have to prepare as if you didn’t do anything last week and you are not going to be doing anything next week. You have to be ready for this week coming.”

Ulster know they let themselves down badly against Leinster in the RDS last week. So Munster can expect a serious backlash?

“I don’t know if it is so much a backlash,” he muses. “You always know what to expect when you go up to Ulster. Any of the senior lads who have been there year in and year out will tell you. You are never going to get an easy game up there. I know it is a cliché, but it’s the fact of the matter. It could be in the Heineken Cup or the Rabo, but at the end of the day it is an inter-pro game between Munster and Ulster and they are always something to be savoured.”

And, of course, Munster are going there on a roll. “That’s it,” he enthuses. “It’s great to keep the winning mentality going. Ulster have tried to make Ravenhill into a fortress over the last while and have done a very good job of it.”

Springbok Ruan Pienaar is one of the best and most respected number nines in the world. Is there a danger that Sheridan will be overawed by the challenge?

“If each one of our guys outperforms his opposite number, then it makes life easier as a team, the challenge from my side is to try and make his life as difficult as possible,” he states with typical simplicity.

You point out to him that it might be a little unsettling to see a different man in the number 10 jersey every time he turns around to pass the ball.

“No, not all”, he reassures. “You deal with these guys, Keats [Ian Keatley], JJ [Hanrahan] and Johnny [Holland], day in, day out. You like to spend as much time as you can on and off the pitch in the video room and try and understand how they want to play the game which will help you as well. If a certain situation arises, and you are ready for it, having practiced it, it is always going to be easier. There are obviously things you always want to improve. I am learning as I go along. That is the biggest thing. When you are in the academy there comes a point when you think you know it all. Then the second you take the step up to senior level, you realise that you literally learn something new every game.”

As for thinking a week or two of the visit to Ravenhill, he accepts “you have that in the back of the mind” before warning “you can really only focus on this weekend. It is Ulster at Ravenhill. If we start thinking about the Heineken Cup games on the following two weekends, we are going to fall on our faces up there. We got to just focus on this week, get our preparation right and if we do that it will push us forward going into those two ERC games.”