Darren Cave: 'I'm ready to play'

By Dan Pitcher

It was one of the more unlikely of match day squad selections this week but Ulster’s Darren Cave is more than ready to take his opportunity and re-open his case for regular selection for his province and Ireland.

Having been cast aside by Ulster this season in the Guinness Pro 12 and European Champions Cup in favour of Jared Payne at centre, Cave was excluded from the original 37 man squad that gathered in Carton House this month.

However, Darren has completely come in from the cold reality of exclusion and will partner Gordan D’Arcy tomorrow as Ireland clash with Georgia at the Aviva Stadium.

“I've been around the game a while now and sure it's a fickle world, professional sports is the most fickle thing, if ever I needed a reminder of that it's been the last couple of weeks.” Cave said.

“It was only two or three weeks ago I was on the phone to Joe (Schmidt), talking about how I wasn't going to be involved in the camp week, then got a phone call from him last Sunday saying come on in to camp.”

“I'm then thrown in to play, I'm delighted for it, It's a bit more unorthodox than normal but I'm ready to play. It's not a problem.”

With Les Kiss taking up a position as Director of Rugby at Ulster during the time the province were looking for a successor to Mark Anscome, it was the current Ireland assistant coach who dropped Cave for Jared Payne who picked up an ankle injury during the Springboks win.

That said Cave knew the writing was on the wall for him for this international window and perhaps even for the RBS Six Nations Championship in February.

His original conversation with Joe Schmidt omitting him from the squad was one he was expecting.

“It was a phone call I was expecting to be honest.” Cave said.

“This year at Ulster has been a bit stop start for me, I got a shoulder operation in the summer and missed the first game.”

“I played my first game back then the week after and I played eight minutes and popped a rib and then I struggled a wee bit.”

“Jared came back from injury and played well, I just hadn't really got going.”

“I know I had played a lot of decent rugby in the past but I wasn't overly surprised that he said you were going to miss out this time." he said.

The Ulsterman now has a huge opportunity to stay in Joe Schmidt’s plans ahead of next week’s test series finale against Michael Cheika’s Wallabies.

Cave however insists that he hasn’t let anything distract him and he has prepared for this game just like any other.

“It's such a cliche, but I haven't been worrying about the implications of playing. I'm literally trying to find my feet, learning my detail, doing video and get ready to play.”

“I haven't started worrying about who is doing what, how Jared's foot is and the implications are for the week after.”