Edinburgh's Tovey hopes to continue fine record against Ulster

Edinburgh's Jason Tovey has recovered from illness

Welsh stand-off Tovey, 27, had to leave the field during last week’s defeat to Zebre due to illness.

However, a weekend of resting sorted him out and he is back to full fitness for the crucial Guinness PRO12 clash with Ulster at BT Murrayfield.

And the fixture has had him reminiscing about a man of the match showing against the same opponents seven and a half years ago.

Then he scored 23 points at Rodney Parade as the Dragons won 26-16 and he has enjoyed many battles with Ulster over the years.

“I have always liked the meetings with Ulster. I scored my first hat-trick against them when I was playing full-back in 2009,” Tovey recounts.

“I had quite a good record against them with the Dragons, but now my only focus is on this match with Edinburgh and getting things back on track.

“Last week was difficult for us. We spoke after the Zebre game of our disappointment and frustration. The game plan had been put in place by Duncan Hodge and the coaches, but we did not execute it.

“We have looked at that this week and want to rectify things in all of the areas where we let ourselves down.

“It was a bit of a wake-up call. We had good results against Treviso and Timisoara when we scored a lot of points. Then in the Harlequins game we played some good rugby.

“The game last Friday showed that we have plenty still to work on. Hopefully we will put it right against Ulster.”

As one of the senior players in the group, Tovey feels that the squad let down acting head coach Duncan Hodge with their display in the Zebre outing.

“Hodgey has brought a lot of positivity to us and we felt like we let him down,” he said.

“The way we’ve played over the past few weeks we’ve improved lots of little things one at a time. We took big jumps forward and we’ve probably gone back a step now.

“The boys know last time out that their individual skills were not good enough. They have gone away and learnt from that. We were winning the Zebre game with five minutes to go and we have to learn to close things out.”