Piutau hopes to reward Ulster’s patience with silverware

Charles Piutau has, at best, five months of rugby in an Ulster shirt to realise his ambition of bringing silverware to a trophy-hungry Kingspan Stadium.

The 26-year-old All Black was a startling piece of recruitment from Auckland Blues in 2014 by operations manager Bryn Cunningham, though rules relating to the number of overseas players in the squad delayed his arrival in Belfast and he spent a year ‘in waiting’ at Wasps, where his extravagant gifts were highlighted in the Aviva Premiership.

Next season he’ll be at Bristol, reputedly lured to the Championship club by a seven-figure salary, though he’s insistent that his commitment to Ulster remains total, especially in the midst of the holiday Guinness PRO14 series of Inter-Provincials. He’s acutely aware of the frustrations of supporters who found last weekend’s 44-16 capitulation to Connacht particularly hard to stomach.