Concerns over Marcell Coetzee's fitness continue to grow at Ulster with the Springbok once again having been ruled out of involvement in Saturday's Guinness Pro14 game at Zebre due to his troublesome knee.
The 26-year-old back rower has played just one game for the northern province this season – their opening win at home to the Cheetahs – and will now have missed four straight matches prompting fears that his issue is worse than Ulster, who are downplaying his absence, are letting on.
"Marcell has still got a slight problem with his knee and hopefully he'll be back next week," said Ulster's new scrum coach Aaron Dundon, echoing the general line recently given when asked about the South African's continued absence since the opening weekend.
“It’s a tough one with Marcell and it’s week-by-week. I don’t think he’s far away and he trained last week and he got through it pretty well.
“We’ve got four big games coming up [in October with two interpros and the same number of European matches] so we’ve got to make sure we get him fit for those games,” added the former Leinster hooker.
Surgery
In total, the ball-carrying player who was brought to the Kingspan Stadium as a marquee signing has only managed five games since arriving in summer 2016 after having undergone surgery for a damaged ACL picked up at previous club the Sharks.
After just four eye-catching appearances last season, during February and March, Coetzee shipped some medial meniscal damage in the home game with Zebre and wasn’t seen in action again until the start of this season when an issue flared up again after the Cheetahs game.
Meanwhile, Jared Payne who has yet to feature this season, since suffering headaches with British and Irish Lions, will also be sitting out to the trip to Italy.
“Hopefully we’ll get him back on the pitch next weekend,” said Dundon.
Elsewhere, Coetzee's fellow Springbok backrower Jean Deysel should be back for the Conference B leaders after missing the last two games with an eye injury.
Luke Marshall, Andrew Trimble, Christian Lealiifano and John Cooney are all likely to return as Les Kiss continues to shuffle his resources with some players from last weekend's thumping win over the Dragons likely to be rested.
