Rabo Pro 12 (Round 6) - Ulster vs Connacht: 19:05 Fri, 5th October @ Ravenhill

First topic message reminder :

So - the two powerhouse provinces go to war. I expect a niggly, ferocious scrap before Saturday’s somewhat less exciting digestif, when Munster and Leinster will determine who’s the third best province in Ireland.

Really looking forward to it, although Dan Park rising from the Western mist has caused a bit of consternation. Connacht looked quite a different unit last weekend.

Assuming an ongoing injury list of Birch, Diack, Fitzpatrick, Wilson, Allen (and obviously McAllister and Farrell), and with the HEC on the horizon, I’d go for:

1) Court
2) Brady
3) Afoa
4) Muller
5) Tuohy
6) Ferris
7) Henry
8) Williams
9) Marshall
10) Jackson
11) Trimble
12) Wallace
13) Cave
14) Bowe
15) Payne

And a bench of:

16) Black
17) Best
18) Macklin
19) Stevenson
20) McComish
21) Heaney
22) Marshall
23) Gilroy

Harsh on McComb and Henderson, given their performances, but there’s only 23 spaces.

McComish’s knowledge and experience of the Connacht players pushes him onto the bench ahead of Henderson. On the other hand, if 1F is still out, I’d actually start Henderson, I think.

At the start of this season I was frustrated we’d lost Barker and kept McComb – completely wrong on that one. He’s shown dog, good defensive skills and some great passing and off-loading. I’d be happy to see him play – but Stevenson has been seriously impressive so far, and Tuohy came right back with a massive bang last week (I especially enjoyed Ryan Constable referring to him “emptying” people).

Best to come off the bench and get at least half an hour. Not 100% sure which of Gilroy or Trimble would start – I do think Trimble’s defence is better, and Connacht have some impressive young backs. Gilroy dancing past tired defenders was a highlight last week – can we just replicate that?

Anscombe will probably start some weird team that still works well, however.

Congrats Ulster. Superb try at the end.

Treviso just had de Marchi sent to the bin. Can the Gunners turn it around?

Val, I miscalculated

Happy with the win, disappointed not to get the bonus point.

Very impressed with Connacht. They are a good side, very physical and hard to play. Not impressed with the ref though, far too many calls at the breakdown went against us when we were in good attack positions.

A win is a win though and sometimes you have to tough it out.

Anyways the real question is what has happened to sparky???? Who was this imposter???

rodders wrote:Happy with the win, disappointed not to get the bonus point.

Very impressed with Connacht. They are a good side, very physical and hard to play. Not impressed with the ref though, far too many calls at the breakdown went against us when we were in good attack positions.

A win is a win though and sometimes you have to tough it out.

Anyways the real question is what has happened to sparky???? Who was this imposter???

Jesus, Rodders, the very last thing we can complain about is the ref tonight.

You think Val? Look I just think the ref was to quick to blow the whistle at times rather than give advantage to the attacking side.

Credit to Connacht for their ferocious defense and I think we were naive in attack at times, spinning the ball wide when there was nothing on.

It wasn't a great performance but ... you know in a way I'm happy enough with the ugly win.

rodders wrote:You think Val? Look I just think the ref was to quick to blow the whistle at times rather than give advantage to the attacking side.

Credit to Connacht for their ferocious defense and I think we were naive in attack at times, spinning the ball wide when there was nothing on.

It wasn't a great performance but ... you know in a way I'm happy enough with the ugly win.

I think we definitely got the rub of the green, especially at the breakdown, another referee would have penalised us more.

Really? Ok look this is just my first impression maybe when I re watch I'll feel differently. Were you at the game Val?

rodders wrote:Really? Ok look this is just my first impression maybe when I re watch I'll feel differently. Were you at the game Val?

No, I'm about 5 timezones away, just watching it on the tv.

Edit By penalised us more, I'm only talking about 1 or 2 instances, I think for the most part the officials got most things right, probably couldn't have awarded the penalty try at the first scrum, and I can't comment on the Swift penalty as I didn't see the knee or what led to it.

Ha fair enough sir! Just wondering.

Look it wasn't great tonight but I think you have to credit Connacht for not letting us play. We played silly rugby at times but 25-0 is a good result when we haven't played well.

I'm happy but not satisfied if that makes sense.

In terms of the penalty try well the ref could have awarded it at the first scrum when we were driving Connacht towards the line.

When he did award it, it seemed harsh because we were someway out but you can see the Connacht TH clearly release his bind on Court when he'd been warned all game about his binding. I'm not a scrummaging expert by any stretch but I think it was fair enough.

rodders wrote:Ha fair enough sir! Just wondering.

Look it wasn't great tonight but I think you have to credit Connacht for not letting us play. We played silly rugby at times but 25-0 is a good result when we haven't played well.

I'm happy but not satisfied if that makes sense.

The problem is that we knew we were going to win, and we did win comfortably, but we really should have got the bp. A lot of it was down to Connacht's fantastic defence, but there was also a lot of passes that weren't good enough. In some ways it is a good thing that we won't be overly cocky going into next week, but at the same time it is a bit worrying the ease with which Griffin and Henshaw were able to penetrate our defensive line when they got the opportunities to do so.

rodders wrote:In terms of the penalty try well the ref could have awarded it at the first scrum when we were driving Connacht towards the line.

When he did award it, it seemed harsh because we were someway out but you can see the Connacht TH clearly release his bind on Court when he'd been warned all game about his binding. I'm not a scrummaging expert by any stretch but I think it was fair enough.

I meant to write probably should have awarded the penalty try at the first scrum. Whoops. The difference the two replacement props made to the Connacht scrum was heartening because I really don't want to see them destroyed by everyone.

Look I agree.

I think Trimble and Cave in particular need to up their games. Far too many silly offloads and handling errors form those two. Paul Marshall hasn't been great either but overall far more positives than negatives.

rodders wrote:Look I agree.

I think Trimble and Cave in particular need to up their games. Far too many silly offloads and handling errors form those two. Paul Marshall hasn't been great either but overall far more positives than negatives.

Oh I agree the positives far outweigh the negatives, and last week things were going to hand so we can just put it down to a bad week. On Marshall, I've made my feelings clear on him plenty of times before, he is a great impact sub, but not someone you want in a battle. Jackson is looking very comfortable though which bodes well for the season ahead. I'd bring Gilroy in ahead of Trimble. On Cave its more difficult, he is great for most of the match, but he has been caught out a few times this season. Hopefully its just a bit of early season rustiness.

Just back fro the match.

Impressions.

I don't think I have ever heard Ravenhill so quiet as during that first half although I suspect the events of 3 weeks ago were the reason for that.

Scrappy at times but as has been mentioned, that was partly due to Connacht.

Sparky? He used to be a slightly mangey looking bear but now I'm not sure if he /she is supposed to be a cat or a squirrel???? A very shiney cat or squirrel I will grant you but...

There was an interesting exchange between Tommy Bowe and Jared Payne at one point. A pass had gone behind Bowe and Payne shouted at him to stay deeper and not over run the pass. Bowe yelled back suggesting that maybe he should have passed earlier!!!!

Great to see the lad back at Ravenhill.

I want the real sparky back. This will not do.

Payne was right. We ran lateral and got too flat too quickly. The backs were poor as a unit tonight. 8-9-10 combination didn't fire off the base off the scrum which was frustrating because the tight five gave them the perfect platform to do it.

We didn't fix enough defenders, we over-elaborated, we made bad decisions.

It was all in all not a clinical enough performance and we need to improve!

Rodders not a clue how you could have any concerns about the referee. Really confused by that one.

I felt a lot of our backplay not coming off was due to a rushed defence targetting payne. I know there were a few times we just had no time on the ball once it got so far out. Good defence, or slow passing , i'm not sure.

Is the general consensus that we are better than last season, but maybe the extent of which is falsely magnified by other teams not turning up as well as they should?

That team tonight would still have struggled badly against the Leinster team we faced in the HC final.

Work to be done. No laurel resting please! SUFTUM

Mark Anscombe was absolutely livid in his post-match interview. Not happy at all. Very worried about Williams' injury - simply because with Wilson and Diack out, we may be reduced to playing Henry, our first-choice openside, at eight. Very disruptive.
Jackson was excellent at what he did, but he needs to mix it up a bit more. I saw him pull off one or two excellent cross-field kicks for the U20s. A couple of kicks over Connacht's onrushing line would have kept them wondering. The one kick from the outhalf position was from Paddy Wallace, and a try resulted (although, in fairness, Connacht were scrambling back).
Really don't know why we went for the posts when we had a penalty and were 17-0 up.

clivemcl wrote:Is the general consensus that we are better than last season, but maybe the extent of which is falsely magnified by other teams not turning up as well as they should?

No. I believe we are much better than last season. I think we are underestimating Connacht here and how well they played and defended. To beat them by 25 points is a massive result. We weren't great in our attacking play and should have got the bonus but its another win under the belt.

I actually prefer to see Luke Marshall or Allen in midfield because not our back play is too lateral with Cave and Wallace. The handful of times that Trimble, Bowe or Payne straightened the line we looked effective but far too often we were just drifting to the touchlines and we looked very much like last season rather than seeing the offloading game Anscombe wants. The support play wasn't as good as last week either.

Plenty to work on but I'm very positive heading into the Heino.

red_stag wrote:Rodders not a clue how you could have any concerns about the referee. Really confused by that one.

Fair enough. I thought he gave some odd penalties, like the one against Touhy for tackling off the ball when the Connacht player ran straight at him, and Connacht were allowed repeated turnovers when they weren't releasing the tackled player and lying all over the ball. I thought he was awful actually and spoiled the game by not getting to grips with the breakdown.

Dan Parks wasn't nearly the danger I thought he'd be. I was pretty concerned he'd keep up a pressure of drip drip points, but that never materialised.

Rodders,

With respect I disagree with every single point you made there.

He was from from "awful"

Genuinely not a clue in the world how that performance could be deemed awful.

Thought Wallace straightened the line more than anything- 12 and 13 actually ran quite hard at them in midfield in the first half and they defended it very well.

Cave ran very laterally at times as did many, many other players. But let's be honest; a very solid Connacht defence in the middle of the park forced that. We couldn't break through and we started running laterally looking for gaps to appear instead of punching through ourselves. One thing that was hugely different was we weren't offloading the ball out of contact like last week; we were offloading in front of the defence without committing players. We needed more phase play, we went wide too early. All in all we played quite far below our potential in attack and the players will be getting an earful on Monday morning.

I think it was insane for us to go for the 3 points at 17-0 up. We so nearly broke them on previous occasions in that half going to the corner. Taking the 3 was a psychological boon for Connacht. Saying 'we can't break you down'. And it was followed by their best period of the game. Connacht defended exceptionally well but they never threatened the scoreboard, bar one missed Dan Parks penalty. If we get that third try earlier in the half, we go on and get the BP in my mind.

Anscombe will have a few harsh words to say about the performance. The forwards were on the whole very good but we simply weren't clinical and we made some very questionable decisions in possession. We were clearly at least 25 points better than the opposition but not good enough to take all 5 points. Not reaching the high standards we have set for ourselves.

Chances are, last week the players got a roasting for too many careless passes and knock ons, and this week they overcompensated by being too careful.

I ceratinly would have liked to have seen it mixed up a bit in the last twenty minutes. Credit to connacht, their defence in the backs made it very hard for us. But a few chips or cross field kicks (Like Paddys) would have played havok with connachts determination to rush up on our backs.

Henshaw does look an exciting player, as does Mcsharry.

Connachts replacement scrum-half however was one of the worst I've seen at Pro12.

Its also quite likely the team knew a win was in the bag, and there are bigger fish to fry in the next few weeks. Conserving energy a little?

Theres a lot of encouragement to be taken by not conceding any points.

Ulster have conceded only 4 tries in 5 matches. Compared with 2nd place Scarlets conceding 10 tries in 6.

Agree with that Notch, we went wide too early and weren't committing any defenders. Very rarely did we have an overlap, if at all, hence we kept drifting into touch.

However you have to credit Connacht's defence too. It was the ferocity of their tackling and aggression at the breakdown(not always legal) that was forcing us to move wide. They repeatedly turned over our ball carriers and Williams apart they were winning the collisions against out big men.

I can't remember ever seeing Ferris held up and turned over before.

Stag awful is an exaggeration but I think he allowed too much cynical play at the breakdown from Connacht which disrupted our attacking play.

Bryn Cunningham mentioned it would have been the first time the team would have gone into the dressing room to be faced with Spence's empty peg. That must have been difficult.

Last season we had 12 points after 5 matches and were one week off a home defeat to Treviso. It took us 10 games to amass 21 points and we looked a shambles without key players.

This season, despite a very traumatic episode, we have had an excellent start and looked very good last week despite the absence of many of our key players.

I think we are in much better shape than we were at this stage last season.

Absolutely MrsP. Absolutely delighted with the progress we're making. But I'm glad to see Anscombe being so hard on the team. I don't think McLaughlin would have come out and criticised the players after a totally one-sided 25-0 win even if we blew the bonus point- which we did a lot in his tenure.

But that shouldn't have been a 25-0 win, it should have been a 40-0 win and a bonus point and the reason it wasn't was things WE had control over. That WE can do better. We shouldn't be measuring ourselves by the yardstick of past Ulster teams but by the yardstick of the Ulster team we could have.

He's doing a good job Anscombe, and his job this week is to hammer home that point- that we can be better than that. Because you know, Humph and Logan they've stated we don't be up there with the best- we want to be better than them. This is the attitude we need to have to get there. We have come a long way and I'm very proud of it- but I want to see this team reach their potential.

So what's everyone's back row for next week, assuming no Williams, Wilson or Diack? Might see McComish starting.

Can anyone point me in the direction of Mark Anscombe's post match interview?

Not seen it yet.

Notch, no argument from me on any of those points at all!

iplayer, Mrs P - at 1:57:47 I think?

You can view it here;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/19817151

I think Anscombe has got it. Its a bit of a learning curve for Anscombe too- Connacht played utterly negatively. The gameplan they played was never going to beat us, it was damage limitation. NZ rugby is about winning. Even if they ship a defeat they'll take something out of trying to play, they'll learn something. Sometimes in the NH, teams have the mindset of the Connacht side. It's one of the reasons we're just not as good as the SH. And Anscombe has to learn how to overcome that approach- we didn't deal with their spoiling tactics well, despite our clear superiority on the scoreboard.

What was depressing about last night was what on earth do Connacht take from that going into the Heineken Cup? They ventured nothing and gained nothing. Yes, there were times they dragged us down to their level but they still lost by 25 points and scored none themselves. They aren't going to get many wins playing like that. I hope we see the Connacht team that played against Leinster give it a go. Not the side that is happy to spoil a game of rugby even if they glean zero advantage from it.

We probably gain more from that than Connacht. If they had been a little less negative we might have hammered them utterly, but they exposed flaws in our attacking gameplan the very loose Blues defence didn't last week. It was a reality check and it will force the team to take a hard look at themselves this week in the build up to Castres.

MrsP wrote:Last season we had 12 points after 5 matches and were one week off a home defeat to Treviso. It took us 10 games to amass 21 points and we looked a shambles without key players.

This season, despite a very traumatic episode, we have had an excellent start and looked very good last week despite the absence of many of our key players.

I think we are in much better shape than we were at this stage last season.

+ 1

Ahem... I pointed out that

Ulster have conceded only 4 tries in 5 matches. Compared with 2nd place Scarlets conceding 10 tries in 6.

which i think is a more (or equally) impressive stat, yet MrsP gets all the '+1's?

Its not fair i tell ya!

on another note. has anyone seen Nick Williams' dog?

+ 1 for clive

Thanks Don and Notch.



He certainly wasn't pleased, was he? I saw him walking back to the tunnel with the players after they had done their "thank the fans" thing and he had a face like thunder!

Clive,

What can I say? You've either got it or...

clivemcl wrote:Ahem... I pointed out that

Ulster have conceded only 4 tries in 5 matches. Compared with 2nd place Scarlets conceding 10 tries in 6.

which i think is a more (or equally) impressive stat, yet MrsP gets all the '+1's?

Its not fair i tell ya!

Its hardly a competition.

Rava wrote:

clivemcl wrote:Ahem... I pointed out that

Ulster have conceded only 4 tries in 5 matches. Compared with 2nd place Scarlets conceding 10 tries in 6.

which i think is a more (or equally) impressive stat, yet MrsP gets all the '+1's?

Its not fair i tell ya!

Its hardly a competition.

Well said Rava.

Quite right!

But, I won!

Rava wrote:

clivemcl wrote:Ahem... I pointed out that

Ulster have conceded only 4 tries in 5 matches. Compared with 2nd place Scarlets conceding 10 tries in 6.

which i think is a more (or equally) impressive stat, yet MrsP gets all the '+1's?

Its not fair i tell ya!

Its hardly a competition.

+1

I got five +1's/2/3/4/5 for my comment after the Ulster vs Blues match last week.

Showoff!

And, anyway, only eejits +1'd your post!



Hang on a minute...

Rava wrote:

clivemcl wrote:Ahem... I pointed out that

Ulster have conceded only 4 tries in 5 matches. Compared with 2nd place Scarlets conceding 10 tries in 6.

which i think is a more (or equally) impressive stat, yet MrsP gets all the '+1's?

Its not fair i tell ya!

Its hardly a competition.

It was hardly a competition the beating we took off yer boys on Saturday Rava! I was in a mood after getting embarassed! At least the firsts held up better!

Nick Williams is carrying well, he did that for my Munster too but not as well as he is doing now. Is he hitting rucks or making tackles would be my main question. Haven't seen much of Ulster bar the Blues game.