Bowled over to get Ulster call

Ulster's win over Treviso in Italy last weekend represented, for many people, the beginning. Again.

Harry Williams and Ulster's great expectations and the heightened optimism that followed the beanfeast and frolics at Lansdowne Road after the European Cup final win in 1999 were not slow in crashing down around the heads at Ravenhill Road.

After those days of promise Ulster's prosperity had flatlined. Off went Williams to Lansdowne, in came Alan Solomons this season and the embryo of a new Ulster squad emerged. With it came a few new faces, or perhaps, older faces with a fresher, washed down look.

Neil Doak, who at 28 years of age might have thought his best years were behind him, or maybe had even fallen somewhere between trying to dovetail an international cricket career with the pursuit of rugby at the highest level.

In the summer when the Ulster selection was originally announced, Doak, although released by the IRFU from his job as a rugby development officer to train with the squad in the mornings, was not included.

Last week, Doak started the match against the Italian side before the younger Kieron Campbell came on late in the game. Brad Free has now come in for Campbell as Ulster adjusts for the visit of Wasps on Friday.

The scrumhalf position has generated quite a feisty competition between the three players, but from moving from the unmapped number nine to starting the opening Heineken European Cup match was bound to have further sharpened his appetite for the higher level.

"It has been very, very good progress from my point of view," he says. "The European Cup is the Northern hemisphere's priority rugby competition and it's a tough one, especially the group we have been drawn in with Stade Francais and Wasps.

"Against Treviso I thought I did okay. I was reasonably happy with my performance. It was hard to get any flow at all, it was all stop start. At times it was quite difficult to get the team into the game.

" We'd a look at the video and if a couple of passes had gone to hand and a few other things went right we could have gotten in with some tries."

Doak has been here before. And further. Under Murray Kidd in 1995, he warmed the bench for Ireland. Around the same time he was preoccupied with being a right hand bat and off-break bowler. Two years before Doak, at 20 years of age, had played his first international match against Zimbabwe before then touring Kenya with the Irish cricket team in the ICC Trophy.

That same year Kidd collared him he was preparing to play the West Indies in the summer at Clontarf Cricket Club. Satisfying both sporting talents brought its own problems.

"I was trying to mix and match both. It was very difficult. Playing the two sports was really hard, especially after rugby turned professional. Although I'd been on the bench for Ireland, it probably hindered my rugby career. I was going for the cricket World Cup and was trying to keep both going."

It was too much for the Irish Cricket Union (ICU) too. Before the trip to Kenya in 1994 they asked their players not to engage in contact sports. City of Derry's Stephen Smith ignored the ban, played rugby and stayed in Ireland. Doak, who was then with Malone Rugby Club travelled.

"In hindsight, I should have chosen one or the other and in the end it was too much," he says. Doak turned his back on international cricket last year.

"Getting on to the Ulster European panel was massive news for me. I've had my injuries and have had problems with my feet. The match against Leinster this year was my first start for Ulster for five or six years. It was very important."

"But rugby is so up and down. Take Stringer (Irish outhalf, Peter). He did nothing wrong and suddenly he finds someone else playing in his place. The important thing is that the team keeps winning.

"In that respect it has been a difficult last couple of years for Ulster and it has been a long haul for me. Alan (Solomons) coming in has changed things. All the players now have got to impress, show him what they can do. Whatever was there in the past doesn't matter, even if you were an international player. You've got to prove it to him and put in the performances, which frankly Ulster had not been doing."

Wasps arrive in Belfast on Friday for another European engagement.

Doak looks at the Zurich Premiership side's injury list, which includes former England captain Lawrence Dallaglio and Joe Worsley, but he still sees astonishing depth and experience in the side.

"Yeah, they've lots of internationals. But with the win in Treviso, we've gotten ourselves on a bit of a roll. Someone said to me that we hadn't won in Europe for two years, so it's an important start for us and it was the result that counted."

Another win would cement confidence and say more than words about the worth of the Celtic League. For Doak, he may never again hit 84 runs against Surrey or take four wickets for nine runs against Gibraltar.

But, hey, Solomons has seen the rugby talent and has taken the necessary notice.