Luke Marshall back leading posse with Springboks the target

It's been the theme of the tour; Ulster redemption stories. Throughout the whole of last season, Paddy Jackson, Stuart Olding and Luke Marshall had managed one cap between them – Olding's against Georgia – and he and Marshall had even fallen off the radar at Ulster. A year ago the odds on them forming Ireland's 10-12-13 in a series decider away to the Springboks would have been off the radar too.

Indeed, at the start of this season, Marshall had all but resigned himself to moving on. Injuries, a suspension, the ever-expanding logjam in Ulster’s midfield and loss of form had limited him to six starts in the previous campaign.

Marshall thought he’d hit his lowest point when suffering a knee injury playing for the Ulster Ravens, in November 2014 which ruled him out of contention for their European games, but he was wrong. Worse followed after he was cited for kicking an opponent’s head in Ulster’s win at home to the Scarlets at the end of last February. He was suspended for five weeks.

‘Offload channel’

"That was by far the lowest I've ever felt," says the softly-spoken 25-year-old. "In a ruck my foot hit his head as I was coming through to kick. It wasn't even a kick. I put out my foot to block an offload channel. I suppose it was clumsy and I ended up connecting with his head and he got knocked out. I had certainly no intention to kick him in the head, but that's how it was played in the hearing, that I kicked him in the head, so I ended up getting eight weeks, reduced to five."

At this point, he must have figured fate was simply against him. "That was pretty much the season gone. With Stuey (McCloskey), Cavey (Darren Cave) and Jared (Payne) there, my chances of getting back into the Ulster team were slim and any chance of getting to the World Cup was pretty slim too."

With his contract due to expire at the end of this season, he admits: “At the start of this season I’d sort of prepared myself to moving on to a club for someone else. It was a club in England that I was more inclined to heads toward.”

All began to change at the start of December. Recalled for the league win at home to Edinburgh, when Cave was one of four Ulster injuries that night, Marshall was retained a week later and shifted to outside centre against Toulouse, scoring tries in each of the back-to-back wins over them. So began a run of 17 games until the end of the season.

“It was never a case that I didn’t want to be at Ulster. It was just that I wasn’t able to get much game time last season, which was partly my fault because I wasn’t playing very well. You definitely need a bit of fortune here and there. Anybody who says otherwise is probably lying. I got a bit of luck, in the form of bad luck and injuries for others. It gave me a run of games, surprisingly enough at 13. I’d played there a few times before but I never thought I’d nail down a starting jersey there.”

After the comeback win over Oyonnax in January, Les Kiss approached him. "I love playing for Ulster. The coaching staff are as good as anywhere, and the facilities and team as well. I chatted with 'Kissy' after the Oyonnax game and I made up my mind to stay.

“The players they’d signed showed Ulster’s ambition, and Kissy is a top-class coach. The way he runs things is brilliant. No matter where I thought I could go, I didn’t think I could get any better from that point of view.”

He signed a two-year deal and with his confidence and form restored, Marshall was a 24th/25th man for all of Ireland's Six Nations games. Travelling with the squad, doing the match-day warm-ups and preparing to play in case he was required to do so.

Two-year gap

Come this tour, no-one was readier to play in that first Test in Cape Town. He was bridging a two-year gap since his last cap almost to the day, against Argentina, whereas for Jackson it was 10 months and, a week ago, Olding played his first Test in a year and seven months.

Like Olding and Jackson, Marshall was born to play rugby, both his father (Richard) and grandfather (Reid) having played for Ulster schools, and like Olding was also the third of three rugby-playing boys (Danny, who also played for Ulster schools, and Paddy).

“My dad also coached a bit of mini-rugby, so I was kind of forced to play,” he jokes. “To be honest I preferred soccer when I was younger. I always thought playing professional rugby was a pipe dream.”

Playing for first the Ulster schools and then the Irish schools fuelled his ambitions. Having been brought into the Ulster academy and converted into a 12, he made his debut at 19 off the bench against Munster in October 2010, there followed an Under-20 World Cup, where a talented squad, including Jackson, under-achieved.

Marshall and Jackson had started out as rival outhalves in their school days. “He was a year below me at school (Ballymena Academy), but I heard about him pretty early on, when I was about 15, about this young guy coming through from Methody. I knew he was pretty special back then.

“We had a good few battles against each other. Actually he put us out of the Schools Cup. I kicked a drop goal to put us ahead. Five minutes later he tried one, missed his but the ball bounced back from the in-goal area and one of their guys scored the try which won it for them. He told me a couple of years later that he only tried his because I had done it.”

Marshall and Jackson even made their Irish debuts together, at 21 and 20, in the 2013 Six Nations defeat away to Scotland, giving glimpses of what they could bring to the mix when Marshall made a couple of clean line breaks.

‘Pretty cool’

"It was disappointing to lose but I'll never forget the experience. To play with Brian (O'Driscoll) was special and after Rog came on for Paddy it was pretty cool to finish the game in between those two."

Marshall would win his first five caps alongside O'Driscoll. "I learned a lot off him, just playing alongside him. He gave me a lot of advice as well. On my debut I was very nervous but he was a very calming influence."

Gordon D’Arcy was also generous with his time and advice. “That was one thing I admired massively about him. I was a young kid trying to take his jersey away and yet he would give me everything I needed advice wise.”

Alas, after the draw at home to France in his second Test came the defeat to Italy in Rome, when Marshall was one of three Irish backs forced from the field in that first-half carnage. It would be the first of four concussions in just under a year. There was another, almost a year later, when training with Ulster in January 2015.

Thankfully there have been none since. Apart from the immediate aftermath of that fourth concussion against the Dragons at Ravenhill in February 2014, he says there was never a stage when he thought that he’d have to retire.

“You hear of players suffering from headaches and having to go home and sit in a dark room, or can’t concentrate and all sorts of things like that. I was never at a stage like that at all. In that sense, I was always fine. I love playing rugby and I’m very lucky to do it. Unless there was a point when I felt it was going to stop me from doing what I love, there was no point worrying about it.”

Though surprised by his own progression from first a 10 then to 12 and now especially to 13, he admits that reverting to inside centre in the Cape Town Test was “a wee bit more stressful”, adding: “I’ve really enjoyed 13 this season. You’ve more time on the ball. It is tougher defensively. At times you feel like you’re being pulled in and you don’t want to isolate your back three.”

‘Smarter player’

He's been through plenty in the last four years and no less than Jackson, Marshall is a wiser player four years on from their trying introduction to Test rugby. "Physically I'm similar, but I've definitely learned a lot more about the game. I'm definitely a much smarter rugby player than I was. I see things a bit earlier."

Jackson has been on the scene more than Marshall in the intervening years, but this tour could be a benchmark for both of them. At 25, you'd hope his luck has turned. "This is only my eighth cap," he notes. "And at Ulster we've had some big wins but in terms of silverware, we've achieved nothing, so there's lots to achieve there and I've definitely a lot of drive and ambition for the future."

A Test series win would make it one hell of a benchmark. “I think we’re in a very good position,” maintains Marshall. “We should definitely have won the last game. They played very well in the last 10 minutes and they probably think they’ve weathered the storm against us and there’s not much more to come.”

“But as a group we only feel we were at 70 per cent in that last game. I’m pretty confident we can put up a pretty good challenge. There’s not too much pressure on us. The pressure is on them.”

And, as Joe Schmidt reminded the squad earlier in this week, this opportunity will never come by again. "It's a pretty cool thing to think about. Potentially it's a bit daunting. We've already one piece of history by winning out here but to win a series which no-one gave us any chance to win would be great."

There’d have been long odds on that too.