Mullan is focused on chasing Wolfhounds (From Worcester News)

Mullan is focused on chasing Wolfhounds

9:00am Friday 27th January 2012 in Tom Guest By Tom Guest, @tomguestWN #WENsport

IN demand Worcester Warriors prop Matt Mullan insists all contract talks have been put on hold this week so he can concentrate on playing for England Saxons against Ireland Wolfhounds at Exeter’s Sandy Park tomorrow (5pm).

The Sixways loosehead, who is out of contract in the summer and is thought to be attracting attention from Saracens, Harlequins and Leicester Tigers, has been based at Woodbury Park in Devon as the Red Rose second string prepare to tackle the Irish.

Saxons coaches Jon Callard and Simon Hardy named their starting XV for the match yesterday and Mullan, who also has one senior cap to his name, was handed the number one jersey.

Mullan said: “In truthfulness, my contract is on the back-burner this week and I am just concentrating on the Saxons.

“The Saxons stuff is very exciting and our main challenge is to pull together as a team, rather than as individuals from different clubs. England have announced new-look squads this year and we all have the opportunity to impress.

“I’ve been saying ever since the Churchill Cup that I just want to get my head down and play for Worcester Warriors and keep them in the Premiership.”

Mullan also revealed his frustration at how the Aviva Premiership campaign is interrupted by the various cup competitions.

He explained: “We are now in the middle of four weeks without a Prermiership game.

“These other competitions are frustrating after we had put together a good run in the league.

“This year has been going really well and we managed to record back-to-back wins, which hadn’t happened in a long time, and we also got the away win monkey off our back.

“It is nice to be rotated out of the team from time to time, to start on the bench or to just play 55 minutes as that helps to develop the whole squad. The Premiership games are full of pressure, while it is a bit different in Europe and the LV= Cup.

“We try to win every game we go into and in the Amlin games guys are given a chance to impress the coaches, but the Premiership is very much our focus — Hilly has said that since the start of the year.

“You can see with the teams trying to fight it out on all three fronts that they often begin to struggle towards the end of the season.

“We return to Premiership action with a trip to Sale Sharks in February and no away game is ever easy in this league. It was a really tough game when we beat them 17-12 at Sixways on the opening day of the season and a lot of the lads said it was one of the fastest games they’d played in.”

Mullan added: “Hilly said we would take a bit of attention off our defence for these four cup games and put everything into attack.

“Against Stade, people like myself had had the previous week off and we were perhaps a little slow to get going, while Stade played really well.

“We know they had to win the game because of where they are in the French league — they are targeting winning the Amlin Cup so they can get back into next year’s Heineken Cup.

“You only had to look at the team they put out — there were someting like 600 international caps in their side.”