{"id":144734,"date":"2025-10-25T14:19:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T14:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/144734\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T14:19:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T14:19:07","slug":"united-rugby-championship-ulster-lose-to-lions-despite-baloucoune-hat-trick-as-it-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/144734\/","title":{"rendered":"United Rugby Championship: Ulster lose to Lions despite Baloucoune hat-trick &#8211; as it happened"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ulster hooker Stewart to lead Ireland XV in Spainpublished at 13:48 BST<\/p>\n<p>13:48 BST<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-16yshci-Paragraph e14e9ror4\">HT: Lions 17-19 Ulster<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ulster hooker Tom Stewart will captain an Ireland XV against Spain in Leganes on Saturday, 8 November.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Stewart will lead a 28-strong panel which consists of test-capped Ireland players, in-form provincial players and emerging talent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 24-year-old is one of nine players who have appeared for Ireland&#8217;s senior team alongside Tom O&#8217;Toole, Michael Milne, Darragh Murray, Robert Baloucoune, Shayne Bolton, Harry Byrne, Michael Lowry and Ben Murphy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Scott Wilson, David McCann, Nathan Doak, Jack Murphy, Jude Postlehwaite and former Ireland sevens star Zac Ward join Stewart, O&#8217;Toole, Baloucoune and Lowry in a 10-strong Ulster contingent for the game against Spain, who came second in the Europe International Championship behind Georgia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Cullie Tucker, who was part of Ireland&#8217;s summer coaching team in Georgia and Portugal, will be head coach for the game in Spain, which takes place after Andy Farrell&#8217;s senior team host Japan in Dublin at 12:30 GMT.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-cgjb6m-Keyword e2vephq0\">Ireland XV Squad<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-cgjb6m-Keyword e2vephq0\">Forwards: <\/b>Lee Barron (Munster), James Culhane (Leinster), Sam Illo (Connacht), Sean Jansen (Connacht), Diarmuid Mangan (Leinster), David McCann (Ulster), John McKee (Leinster), Michael Milne (Munster), Darragh Murray (Connacht), Evan O&#8217;Connell (Munster), Tom O&#8217;Toole (Ulster), Ruadhan Quinn (Munster), Alex Soroka (Leinster), Tom Stewart &#8211; captain (Ulster), Alex Usanov (Leinster), Scott Wilson (Ulster)<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-cgjb6m-Keyword e2vephq0\">Backs: <\/b>Robert Baloucoune (Ulster), Shayne Bolton (Connacht), Harry Byrne (Leinster), Nathan Doak (Ulster), Cathal Forde (Connacht), Fintan Gunne (Leinster), Dan Kelly (Munster), Michael Lowry (Ulster), Ben Murphy (Connacht), Jack Murphy (Ulster), Jude Postlethwaite (Ulster), Zac Ward (Ulster).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ulster hooker Stewart to lead Ireland XV in Spainpublished at 13:48 BST 13:48 BST HT: Lions 17-19 Ulster&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-144734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115435245614647556","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}