Kyle McCall: ‘This is as close as you get to a European game’

Ulster loosehead Kyle McCall is like any prop: he wants to scrummage, and scrummage his opposite number off the park. 

Plenty of logic in that, but when McCall comes up against his ‘friendly’ Connacht counterpart this Friday in the first of the Guinness PRO14 derbies at the Kingspan Stadium, he knows he will have to produce his A game.

These behemoths in the front row are not just very adept at the dark arts of that little corridor of the scrum, they are now very noticeable out in the open, where tackling, clearing out and, believe it or not, slick hands are the order of the day.