Ulster star Cave ready for the spotlight

Darren Cave tried to be diplomatic, he even contradicted himself once or twice, but there is no disguising the fact he and his colleagues see Sunday’s Heineken Cup meeting with Munster as an unofficial Irish trial.

Ulster backs coach Neil Doak said as much earlier this week and there is no doubt the all-Irish quarter-final will be an opportunity for Cave, Paul Marshall, Dan Tuohy and Chris Henry to impress ahead of the summer tour.

“There are times when it does slip into your head,” said Cave, “but a lot of the players who have been on the fringes have sort of forgotten about it.’’

That was the party line but what followed was more revealing: “It is almost, I don’t know if chip on the shoulder is a wee bit too far to go, but there is very much a feeling in this squad that there are players who have been unlucky with Ireland. We feel the only way to change that is to go and win something and so it works doubly for us, so nobody is too worried about it. We’re trying to beat Munster this weekend and win this competition.”

Whatever about his team-mates, discovering the root of Cave’s international frustrations isn’t difficult. He turned 25 yesterday but still has just two senior caps, earned against Canada and the USA in the 2009 Churchill Cup. It is a paltry return for a centre who offers a real threat.

Keith Earls played alongside Cave – though on the wing — in the Irish U20 side that claimed a Grand Slam five years ago. The Limerick man already has 30 caps and a dozen tries to his name so their performances in the midfield will be of considerable interest.

“I actually haven’t played against Keith that much because he is often getting rested under the player management scheme that is around.

“But I have played against [Lifeimi] Mafi and he is a class player and he works really well with Keith and how they run off each other and play off each other. Paddy [Wallace] and I are happy with how we are playing so it should be a good one to watch.”

Cave’s progress has been stalled by some ill-timed injuries. Last year, he returned from a knock just in time to make the replacements bench for the European quarter-final against Northampton. This year, he had to sit out over two months that encompassed the entire Six Nations.

With Brian O’Driscoll absent, the latter was a particularly annoying setback. Cave had been mentioned in dispatches as one of those primed to profit from the great man’s surgery. Instead, he could only sit and watch as Earls took full advantage.

“From an Irish perspective, the injury was at a terrible time but, from an Ulster perspective, it probably wasn’t the worst. I was injured for 10 weeks and I missed five games. At a different time of the season I could have missed 10.

“I am not going to hide away and lie saying watching the Six Nations wasn’t tough. You watch it and think ‘I’d love to be playing’. I got over it very quickly and I knew I’d have an opportunity this week, as do a lot of other players in our team, to showcase our skills.”

Where and when better to do just that than in Thomond Park in the knockout stages of the Heineken Cup? “Munster are the number one seeds so we’re not hiding away from the fact that they are favourites to win this game.

“But if favourites always won in rugby it wouldn’t be the game we all love and we all play, so while it is going to be a tough game a lot of players in this team have won in Thomond Park before so it could happen.”