Stewart Moore eager to put Ireland experience to good use as Ulster face Zebre at Kingspan Stadium

Moore starts at full-back as the United Rugby Championship resumes on Friday night with a home tie against Zebre.

He played in two of Emerging Ireland’s three victories in South Africa and was called to Dublin to train with the Irish senior squad during the autumn internationals.

“It felt like I’d won a competition to go and sit in with the Irish squad for the weekend, but I got called down to be 24th with the ‘A’s’ so I think the purpose in that was just to get you involved in match day set up and going round what they do,” Moore said.

“I thought that was great and I could see some of that wear off from the Emerging tour as you knew what was going on – that was a class experience and unreal.”

Moore absorbed as much knowledge as he could in the camp.

“Even the captain’s run you’d just be watching how boys do things and it is all very similar – the standards we drive here are the standards they drive there – so it wasn’t very far apart in terms of that,” he said.

“It’s just what gets each player ticking before a game and watching the likes of Garry Ringrose and big ‘Stu’ (Stuart McCloskey), and seeing what he gets up to, and it was a completely different perspective I suppose.”

Moore thoroughly enjoyed his experience with Emerging Ireland and now he is eager to put what he learned into practice.

“It was class. It was obviously brought together quite late before we went to South Africa, so even collecting all the information and knowledge along with all the other lads there was tough but really enjoyable,” he said.

"And I thought we did a good job and went three from three, and for all of us it was a great learning experience – learning the calls which were the same as the Irish calls, which I thought was kind of good because I’m a nerd.

“We were in Bloemfontein and in the hotel all the time which you’d think would be annoying, but there were all these new faces and I knew a lot of boys, and I was meeting other boys who were younger than me or a bit older than me.”

Senior Ireland coaches Simon Easterby, Paul O’Connell and Mike Catt gave Moore valuable work-ons to take away from his time in South Africa.

“Probably the main one would be consistency around kicking,” said Moore.

“I know that it can be a very good superpower for the likes of myself and it sometimes is very inconsistent, and just making that a superpower would be a big one for me.”

Ulster team v Zebre, Kingspan Stadium (7.35pm).

Ulster: Stewart Moore, Ethan McIlroy, James Hume, Luke Marshall, Jacob Stockdale, Jake Flannery, Nathan Doak, Callum Reid, Tom Stewart, Marty Moore, Cormac Izuchukwu, Sam Carter, Matty Rea, Marcus Rea, Duane Vermeulen (capt).

Replacements: John Andrew, Andy Warwick, Jeff Toomaga-Allen, Iain Henderson, David McCann, Michael McDonald, Angus Curtis, Ben Moxham