Rugby

Bowe and Trimble to wing it for Ulster against Edinburgh

Ulster's Tommy Bowe (above) and Andrew Trimble (below) are set to start against Edinburgh on Friday 
Ulster's Tommy Bowe (above) and Andrew Trimble (below) are set to start against Edinburgh on Friday  Ulster's Tommy Bowe (above) and Andrew Trimble (below) are set to start against Edinburgh on Friday  (Giuseppe "Pino" Fama)

IRELAND wingers Tommy Bowe and Andrew Trimble have been included in the Ulster side to face Edinburgh in Friday’s final pre-season friendly at Goldenacre.

It will be Trimble’s first game for Ulster since October 2014 after he missed most of last season with a toe injury and he will be hoping to prove his match fitness after hobbling off with a similar problem during Ireland’s World Cup warm-up match with Wales,

The 30-year-old will play on the on the left wing, while Bowe, who is expected to be named in Ireland coach Joe Schmidt’s squad next week, starts on the right.

Ulster head coach Neil Doak has named an extended panel for the game with 11 replacements making the trip to Scotland – seven fewer than he picked for the opening friendly last week when Leinster came away from the Kingspan Stadium with a 24-21 victory.

Doak will be looking for an improved display tonight and he also wants to see Ulster produce better performances away from home.

“Like every team we’re in it to win every competition – Europe and the PRO12 – so we want to make sure we give ourselves the opportunity to perform well on both fronts,” he said.

“Ideally we want to win both competitions that’s what we’re in the game for but we know it’s going to be difficult.

“So we need to try and make sure we get consistency to our game. We were pretty strong at home last season so we’ve got to make sure that’s a starting point for us and when we go away from home we’ve got to make sure we pick up as many points as possible.

“We’ve got a quality squad and the number of guys we have in the national squad shows that and if you look at last year we probably took a bit of traffic with people who weren’t available.

“The likes of Iain Henderson, Chris Henry, Dan Tuohy and Andrew Trimble, for example, so there were a lot of guys didn’t play a lot of rugby for us.”

Meanwhile, Robbie Diack, who will start at number eight tonight, believes last week’s defeat to Leinster needs to be put into perspective although, like his coach, he accepts that there is room for improvement with the PRO12 opener against the Ospreys just a week away.

“Obviously it’s disappointing when you look at the result but I think when you take into consideration that it was our first outing, the fact that there are new combinations out there and that guys were playing their first games for Ulster Rugby, it was quite promising,” said the Irish international.

“There were some moments that we looked good and there were some moments when we looked shabby. I think there were some great individual scores and some great phases in attack.

“We conceded some easy tries at maul time and our discipline was another issue, which seems to have cost us quite a bit over the past couple of seasons.”

“We need to go back to the drawing board and look at a few different combinations and we are hungry to get back to winning ways with the first league game fast approaching.”