DAN MCFARLAND HAILED the excellence of James Hume’s performance on Friday night, placing the quality of his young centre’s defensive work in the ‘world class’ category.

“It is not a term I use very often,” said the Ulster coach.

Yet you can see why he is using it now. Hume’s maturation this season has been a stand-out feature of Ulster’s season, the improvement of his decision-making leading to an international cap and now, almost certainly, a place on the plane for this summer’s tour to New Zealand.

“His footwork etc, he’s so strong on the ball as well, has really good acceleration, but his defence is world-class, as a centre,” McFarland said.

“Again, I don’t say that very often. World class, as an outside centre – one of the most difficult positions to defend on the field. Don’t get me wrong. He still makes mistakes, because he’s a young fellah, but his ability to make plays out there is really excellent.

“The area of his game that he’s been working on and needs to work in is his distribution skills, his ability to be able to move the ball.

“We’ve got people like Mike Lowry, Jacob Stockdale, Will Addison, Robert Baloucoune, Ethan McIlroy – wingers with pace.

Laszlo Geczo / INPHO Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO

“We need to get the ball to them and other teams know that.

“James needs the ability to move the ball, he did that on Friday.” 

He certainly did. He scored one try, created another two, but while that’s all well and good, the things that catch a coach’s eye often differ to the ones that appear on a player’s highlights reel. It is Hume’s defensive work that has seen him move up the pecking order ahead of Chris Farrell in the Ireland set-up.

The reason behind his improvement in this area?

“Jared Payne, plain and simple,” Hume said of Ulster’s defence coach.

“Dan and Sopes (Dan Soper) have played a big part in getting me where I am but I don’t think that I’d be anywhere near where I am without what JP (Payne) has done at the club. When he first stepped into that defensive role, I’d genuinely put him up there as a genuis defensively.

“He always has an answer for everything you could ask him and I don’t stop asking him questions because I know he’ll have the answer.

“Massive credit to him. It’s still a work in progress. I missed a few tackles which I’m pretty peeved off about but it’s good to have something to work on.”

There’s plenty left for him to work on this season, Friday’s win putting Ulster into a semi-final, Friday’s performance putting Hume in the frame for the New Zealand tour.

First, to the URC. Winning this competition is a huge goal of McFarland’s.

“Anything that’s got silver at the end of it matters to us,” he said.

“You love winning games, but you want to win tournaments.

“We managed to back up games over the Champions Cup and I’ve never seen backing up games as an issue for us.

“The only thing that comes into it in terms of backing up is the physical side of things, you know, how many injuries do you have after a game like that? Mentally, it’s not a problem, it’s a Semi-Final and who wants to lose in a Semi-Final?

“It’s a tournament with 16 teams in it that Leinster have dominated for the last five years.

“Anybody that wins it that isn’t Leinster will literally have doubly performed from what you would have expected at the beginning of the year.

“Let’s not kid ourselves, nobody here expected anybody other than Leinster to win this tournament at the beginning of the year.”

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