Gareth Steenson

He's been in round Leinster again, and this is the other thing.

I know you don't see it.

He's almost like a second-choice quarterback.

If you're the second-choice quarterback on an NFL side, he's one of the most valuable players on the team.

He mightn't be the fellow that you get to see every week,

But is he influencing the non-23?

Is he influencing the rest of the group?

And I think from his point of view, he's probably ready now to actually go and challenge something different and change the whole narrative a little bit about him and get after it.

But for this week, it'd be great to see him back in because, let's face it, when you come off the bench in a cup final like that and the game is kind of half gone at halftime, there isn't really a lot of pressure on you.

So it's easy enough to sort of pull the strings here and there and try things and...

Maybe Bordeaux have kind of taken the foot off the gas a little bit here and there too.

So he is going to look better, but it's a different kettle of fish when you actually start a game.

Yeah, I know.

And I suppose you think of the players that were actually missing, Ian Henderson, Stu McCluskey, Rob Herring, you start rhyming these boys off.

Loads of experience in the Monk group.

But at the same time, you're coming up against a side who's second in the league, a big physical team, used to...

definitely more get used to the weather conditions than what the ulster lads would have been i'm playing at nine o'clock at night it's obviously different as well having to learn how to get used to that sort of stuff so the whole day and managing all those sorts of bits and pieces but a bit like you said i think from ulster's point of view um there's probably a little bit trying to get to the end of that year trying to manage actually going into that cup that cup final if you think back the last few weeks that they've had

Coming up against the Stormers, Glasgow, they were actually fighting to try just to claw their way into a top eight situation.

And it kind of maybe probably affected them leading into a final.

It would have been nice if you had that all sewn up and you could actually just kind of go, right, let's rotate our squad.