Flanker Stephan Ferris will face a late fitness test ahead of Ireland’s crunch game in Paris this weekend. The Ulsterman missed his side’s opening match against the Italians with a knee injury but should be passed fit for Saturday.<\/p>\n
This will come as something of a relief to Ulster – a club with a proud history of producing international players – as they were facing the prospect of not being represented in Ireland’s first team.<\/p>\n
Andrew Trimble – who started against Italy and had a hand in the opening try – is struggling with a hamstring strain and has been pushed to the bench to be replaced by Keith Earls.<\/p>\n
The other Ulster players risking splinters in their backsides are prop Tom Court, versatile back Paddy Wallace and club captain Rory Best who again miss out.<\/p>\n
This could be because Ulster, having spent the past few years failing to compete both in Europe and domestically, currently find themselves treading water in mid-table behind rivals Munster and Leinster whose players will once again make up the majority of the Ireland first team.<\/p>\n
Both teams will want to improve on their opening performances as Ireland laboured to a 29-11 victory at home against an average Italian team, while France only managed to win 18-9 at Murrayfield despite dominating the game from the start. One thing’s for sure, after tasting victory’s sweet juices last year the Irish won’t want another 24 years sucking on lemons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Flanker Stephan Ferris will face a late fitness test ahead of Ireland’s crunch game in Paris this weekend. The Ulsterman missed his side’s opening match against the Italians with a knee injury but should be passed fit for Saturday. This will come as something of a relief to Ulster – a club with a proud […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,581,582,161,580,89,583],"class_list":["post-796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-irish-rugby","tag-andrew-trimble","tag-ireland-v-france-match-betting","tag-ladbrokes-six-nations-betting","tag-paddy-wallace","tag-rory-best","tag-stephen-ferris","tag-tom-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63067,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions\/63067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}