Press Notes: Mike Lowry

Ulster’s full-back / out-half spoke to the media earlier this week and he’s excited to get the new season underway… How important is it to get off to a winning start this weekend against Glasgow? Absolutely. Being at home in front of your own fans, you need to get off to a winning start. It’s always important to make a good start in terms of league standings and confidence around the camp that what we’ve done in pre-season is working. Looking back at the Saracens friendly in London, how much do you take from that result given that they defeated Bristol Bears last weekend? There were a lot of positives taken from that game. We worked a lot that week on things that didn’t go well for us the week before and we fixed them. Hopefully we continue that into the season. We can’t take too much from pre-season games because they aren’t competitive fixtures as such, but they are good learning experiences – win or lose. It’s good seeing our attacking structure working well and different aspects of our game we’ve tried to bring in. You got some exposure to the Ireland squad over the summer – how did you find that? It was a great experience. It was a late call-up into the camp but I felt I learned a lot from being around those players who have played at that level. I’ve brought that back into Ulster and I feel it’s added a lot of experience even though I’ve not yet played a game, but being in and around the game days, it was great. I’ve brought it in here to help boys coming through or even boys who weren’t at camp – I feel I have a big role to play now. Were there any words of encouragement from the Ireland Head Coach Andy Farrell? Yeah, I hope he was pleased enough and hope that I put myself into a positive mindset for him. Selection is out of my control – it’s in his – and all I can do is focus on playing well and forcing the coaching staff to pick me. It’s about controlling the controllables, really. You go back a long way with Dan Soper – are you seeing a slightly different side to him now he’s taken up the Assistant Coach role? I know ‘Sopes’ quite well. He’s always had the same coaching style and we all buy into it and it’s a great way to coach the way he does. Everybody is really excited about it and yes, we did well in that second pre-season game against Sarries, but we realised how many opportunities we had. We just need to execute a bit more and we could be a seriously dangerous side. It’s an exciting time for us. How much are you looking forward to the season ahead and the inclusion of the top South African teams? It definitely adds to the competition as a whole. We can’t wait to play the likes of those South African sides; they will bring a real excitement to the Championship and it’s an exciting time to get back out there in front of up to 15,000 fans at home to kick-off the season. This story, plus an exclusive interview with Robert Baloucoune and all the latest news, stats and information on both teams can be found in our digital match programme.