Ulster vs Zebre

First topic message reminder :

Good news! Pienaar is fit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/21415571

We really need him over this international period. Having him in the team allows us to keep Olding at 10. Afoa is now back in the UK, so hopefully he will also be available for selection. With those two in harness, the biggest selection problem we have is in the backrow. Iain Henderson should be released from Ireland duty, which will solve a great deal of the problems we had with no ball carrier in the backrow and one of Fridays most ignoble performers Mike McComish will be dropped. Paddy Wallace is likely to be ruled out injured, meaning a Marshall/Cave midfield is likely

Other than Henderson, I wouldn't make too many unforced changes. We have to think of this game- a must-win game- as feeding into our big away game against playoff rivals Glasgow at Scotstoun. Filling the spine of our team with returning internationals will see us to a good home win most likely, but that won't help us next week when they are once again unavailable. There may also be availability issues during the week with Ireland players kept in camp and we can expect Gilroy and Best to be rested. Obviously we want to see Court back at loosehead and Afoa in the front row, but Callum Black should get considerable time at loosehead too.

Extended Ulster squad v Zebre, RaboDirect PRO12, Friday 15th February, Ravenhill, 7.05pm;

Forwards (14)

Rob Herring, Niall Annett, Tom Court, Callum Black, John Afoa, Declan Fitzpatrick, Johann Muller, Neil McComb, Lewis Stevenson, Dan Tuohy, Chris Henry, Iain Henderson, Mike McComish, Robbie Diack.

Backs (11)

Ruan Pienaar, Michael Heaney, Stuart Olding, Paddy Jackson, Paddy Wallace, Luke Marshall, Darren Cave, Michael Allen, Andrew Trimble, Chris Cochrane, Ricky Andrew.

He had a huge game tonight though.

I hear Luke Marshall went off with two dead legs. How long would that put him out of action?

Could be a couple of days or a couple of weeks depending on the severity.

He doesn't look fully developed at all Rory which is scary because he just seems to have almost comic book hero-ish superhuman strength ..... I mean Ferris, O'Brien, Haskell etc. look like beasts, Henderson looks like an overgrown schoolboy yet he throws people around like ragdolls.... never seen the likes of it!

Yet he has fantastic hands and an astute brain too.... I hate to overhype a young feller but his potential is just outrageous, he is something special alright....

I know, he was never that good at school. I mean he was good, but not THAT good. He has improved dramatically. I don't understand how he is so strong now, he looks like he isn't even trying sometimes as he pushes people back with ease. Plus he is already over 18 stone without looking like it. It will be interesting to see how much he develops.

I also don't know whether he is better at 6 or lock yet. I would rather he develops as a lock but we will see.

I was talking to his coach from school and he said he was one of the best he'd ever coached.

Mind you, he told me my bro-in-law was the best centre he'd ever coached too so...

Which coach was that Mrs P?

He was always one of the most talented players around at BRA, but he wasn't mentioned in the same calibre as a lot of other guys from "better" schools. Paddy Jackson especially was the star of that age group from what I remember.

Graham Moffet.

Lovely guy with an amazing memory for his past pupils. When I mentioned the BIL he immediately told me what year he'd come to school and what position he'd played. Then he named the entire U12 team he had played with !!!!!

Yeah, Mr. Moffet was a great coach.

Maybe I should ask him about you the next time I see him?




I can just see the look on his face when I ask if he remembers teaching Rory Gallagher?

Trimble had another good game. Can't wait til we have someone capable of getting the best out of the players at national level. Too much to hope for?

Thought Ricky Andrew was pretty good as well.

MrsP wrote:I was talking to his coach from school and he said he was one of the best he'd ever coached.

Mind you, he told me my bro-in-law was the best centre he'd ever coached too so...

Holey schmoley Mrs P is related to BOD!

John Afoa obviously had an amazing impact off the bench- don't know what we'll do without him. There really is a black hole when he's not around. Amazingly, the other options seem to be getting worse Losing a 5m scrum on our own put-in in the first half was particularly discouraging, and it was dramatic just how dominant we were at scrum time immediately when he came on.

But special mention has to be made for two other substitutes. Was impressed by the confidence and performances of Stuart Olding and Michael Heaney. Heaney in particular changed the game, and moving Pienaar out of the scrum-half position improved us. Pienaar had a largely good game, did exceptionally well for one of the tries, but he also had a curates egg of a game in a way. Some absolute brilliance mixed with some questionable things. We ran too laterally again in attack and Pienaar was a real culprit of that, for instance. After the succession of scrums on their own line they came up with a good scrum and forced us to play it- he went for the hail mary pass and sent it into touch. Just little things like that we're not used to seeing from him I could see at times his body language was frustrated. Heaney coming on actually improved us a lot, he brought a lot of energy. He sniped and exploiuted gaps in their fringe defence, he actually ran straight, he kept the tempo high and his service was good. He could displace Paul Marshall on merit and threaten Pienaar.

Secondly, Stuart Olding coming on and playing centre made us look better balanced. I think Luke Marshall- in the time he was on- took far too much on himself. Got the impression he was trying to win the game himself. The turnover that resulted in the only points of the game for Zebre came from him running at them from deep in the 22, over-running the support and then trying a miracle offload. He's got a huge amount of promise, I'm a massive fan but I think the desire to make an impression undermined him tonight. Every time he got the ball he tried to run through them regardless. I'm absolutely gutted to see him come off injured though, even if he only ever had an outside chance of any kind of call-up, because he looked gutted too. He's getting there, but he's not there yet. Olding added much more variety and subtlety to the midfield which was all the more impressive when you consider its not his first position and he's even younger than Jackson, Henderson et al.

Well, I don't like to boast but, in certain circles, folks say,

Holey schmoley BOD is related to MrsP!

MrsP wrote:Well, I don't like to boast but, in certain circles, folks say,

Holey schmoley BOD is related to MrsP!

That D4 lot will do anything to get on the Ulster bandwagon....

MrsP wrote:Maybe I should ask him about you the next time I see him?




I can just see the look on his face when I ask if he remembers teaching Rory Gallagher?

Yeah I don't think he will remember any Rory Gallagher's from BRA.

Was Stuart Olding your vintage too then?

Stuart was in my year and Hendy was the year above. There might be another talent added to the Ulster academy in a few years too from BRA, at flanker. I'll remind you all of him if he lives up to his potential, but he has represented Ulster at all age groups so far. He is only 17 though so it will be a few years yet.

GM was saying he had coached Henderson's Dad too.

Oh dear Belfast Telegraph!

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport/rugby/rabodirect-pro12/ulster-return-to-winning-ways-29074724.html

Robbie Diack scores 2 tries and they can't even put up a picture of him!

May I be permitted a slight bit of negativity?

I felt Pienaar had one of his poorest games for Ulster (which is still good in most peoples books), but maybe he needs more rest.

I actually thought there was two or three times where Henderson made wrong decisions. On one occasion, he got bundled out of touch and I do believe Cave screamed at him! A player of his strentgth should have ploughed inside and gone to ground.

There were quite a few instances where we wasted overlaps from players imagining their strength to be more than it was, or a gap to be bigger than it was.

In general, I'm sure Anscombe would agree. The team is still rather far off the mark, and we need to step up.

Also, McComish is really baffling. I dont believe I've ever seen him make yards as a ball carrier, but when he's on the field, that seems to be his role.

I do agree with all the positivity above at the same time though. I think though there were too many expecting an easy win, and prioritised their own name on the score sheet a little too highly.

clivemcl wrote:May I be permitted a slight bit of negativity?

I felt Pienaar had one of his poorest games for Ulster (which is still good in most peoples books), but maybe he needs more rest.

I actually thought there was two or three times where Henderson made wrong decisions. On one occasion, he got bundled out of touch and I do believe Cave screamed at him! A player of his strentgth should have ploughed inside and gone to ground.

There were quite a few instances where we wasted overlaps from players imagining their strength to be more than it was, or a gap to be bigger than it was.

In general, I'm sure Anscombe would agree. The team is still rather far off the mark, and we need to step up.

Also, McComish is really baffling. I dont believe I've ever seen him make yards as a ball carrier, but when he's on the field, that seems to be his role.

I do agree with all the positivity above at the same time though. I think though there were too many expecting an easy win, and prioritised their own name on the score sheet a little too highly.

Agree with much of that Clive. Felt there was a large amount of lateral running in our backs again which is concern. At the very least need more people running hard dummy lines to fix defenders.

At the same time I wouldn't be negative about the negativity. Once we did make a mistake, we got a lot more tense and made more. It was like the Northampton game. If we had relaxed and been patient we would have got there. Instead started to force things. Like we took a quick tap penalty outside their 22 when their defence had already had time to reset with 13 minutes to go. Our lineout had been going well and we had plenty of time. We just needed to relax and be patient and put them under pressure. We were three tries up and massively on top in the game at that point but we looked like all the pressure was on us as we needed that fourth try.

Thats good, pressure is good- heavy is the head that wears the crown and all that. And part of the rise in standards we've had is we do put pressure on ourselves to do better. We're still learning how to do that without going too far the other way.

Well done ulster boys! Any one got any links to highlights for a lad down south (can't get BBC playback)?

Much appreciated

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheUAFC?feature=g-user-u

All four tries plus the full game are on the above channel. Doubt you'd want to watch the full thing, but we did score some good tries for all we forced it at times. Watch out for two classy offloads from Darren Cave.

Notch-

As always you are a gent

Must say I thought Darren was brilliant last night, he seemed so much more intense than usual. He ran hard and created things. Also seemed to be taking charge in attack much more. Best game from him in a good while.

Also mccomish really frustrates me, as Clive says he never makes ground but always carries!! He's vastly improved from last year but let's be honest that's not saying a great deal. Hopefully Connor Joyce can start making an impress with u 20s and get more gametime end of this season for next year!

Just in to the second half:

Luke Marshall is going to be an unbelievable player.
Cave was excellent

Stevenson is blowing really hard and not putting it in, I've seen him lie against a few rucks now rather than be 'productive' which is something I am teaching 13year olds at the moment and they are getting it

Diack

pete (buachaill on eirne) wrote:Diack

Couldn't say enough about Diack as a good, solid club player. He came to us as a guy with great skills, a safe pair of hands, who often didn't make as many yards in contact as he should. He's worked hard on the physical aspect of his game mind you, since Anscombe came in. He was doing very well in the blindside role at the start of the season and has improved his overall workrate and breakdown work when asked to play flanker. He's also a great club player in that he has slotted into so many positions when needed and taken it in his stride. When we were down to one fit lock he slotted in at lock. When we had only one openside, he filled that role. He isn't a lock or an openside but he has worked hard enough to be versatile enough to fill the role and get us through it. He took on the role of calling the lineouts when Muller was out too.

I'm not saying he absolutely excelled at these things the way a specialist in the elite level game would, but every club needs players who are willing to step up and take responsibility when things go wrong or the key guy in that role goes missing through injury or is absent for other reasons. He'll put his hand up and take on whatever comes for the good of the team. Every club needs them.