Dungannon's Jackson hopes to be on target for The Ravens on Saturday.
The Ulster Ravens will be in action this Saturday in the first of their British & Irish Cup matches away to Swansea RFC at St Helens, KO 2.30pm.
The first round of B&I Cup competition was not meant to kick off until the weekend of the 11th December, however, in order to avoid a clash with the Six Nations it was agreed that some of the matches in Round 5, when Ulster are due to play away to Swansea, would be moved to this weekend.
As per last season, there will again be five rounds of competition but an additional quarter final stage has been added with the top two from each pool progressing to the last eight.
Ulster Ravens: (15-9) Conor Gaston; Mark McCrea, Jonny Shiels, Luke Marshall, Tommy Seymour; Patrick Jackson, Ian Porter (1-8) Conor Carey, Nigel Brady (Captain), Alan Whitten, Neil McComb, Ryan Caldwell, Thomas Anderson, Willie Faloon, Scott LaValla
Replacements (16-22) Niall Annett, Kyle McCall, Gerry Cronin, Paul Pritchard, Blane McIlroy, Michael Allen, Chris Cochrane
This is much more like the Ravens side I’d want to see rather than some of the “Pro Heavy” sides that we put out last season. It is a good mix of experienced players, McCrea, Brady, Caldwell, Anderson and Faloon, alongside some of Ulster most exciting youngsters with Gaston, Marshall, Jackson and Porter all tipped for exciting futures.
I’ll be particularly interested to how Conor Gaston fares as the hard running full back has been my stand out player in the Club games I’ve covered this season and the half back combination of Jackson and Porter has stacks of latent talent.
It’s a grizzly old pack up front and I’m sure that their experience will be required against a strong enough Swansea side that are unbeaten in the Principality Premiership having won six and drawn one of their seven league games this season.
The St Helens based side have notched up seven bonus points scoring a whopping 38 tries with their free flowing approach but hopefully our boys will have enough experience to edge this one.
I’m going to come down on the side of a narrow win for the Ravens in a high scoring game.
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