Ulster v Edinburgh

First topic message reminder :

RuggerRadge2611 wrote:

RDW_Scotland wrote:Morning Ulster fans - anyone fancy setting up a match thread for your game with us? Your home game so only fair!

Plus I can't be bothered...

That's what you call dialing in a post. Good effort

Enjoy!

Marshall was very good too. We used him properly as well. Before Gilroys first and Diacks try we used him to hit it straight up and tie in the defence then used the space created by tied in defenders. Just good simple play all round.

Oh, and Craig Gilroy is incredibly classy. I could watch him all day.

To be fair it looked like henderson was holding his hamstring when he went off. Could happen to anyone.

Cave looked like cramp before him and Trimble head butted each other. Bit concerned with Marshall. Seemed to be sore behind his knee although he ran off quite happily.

Diack also made two kicks from hand.the first was very good, the second not as good, but his chase and tackle made up for it. He got us a few turnovers and scored a try. Bar one dropped ball he didnt put a foot wrong in his first game as captain. Well done Robbie!

Notch wrote:I'd still say Paddy Wallace might be a better 10 than McKinney. I hope he proves me wrong, so wrong.

Wish granted - McKinney proved a lot of people wrong.

Wasn't Ricky Andrew good as well?

Well some serious hats off to McKinney and Andrew - well done lads

Diack not only skipper but MOTM.
If POM plays as well tomorrow he will have a good game
I suspect Gilroy was the best performing Irish winger of the weekend

The only downer the injury to Henderson - brought back to soon ?
Other injuries seemed ok

Hard to say Geoff.

As I mentioned, he seemed to be holding a hammy. Couldn't directly link it to the dislocated toe but ...

Callum Black really deserves a motm award one of these days.  He is in inspired form, his scrummaging is so good that hes even outshining Afoa in that department.  Court will be a big loss, but with Black in this sort of form, McAllister on the way back and the potential of a loosehead signing I'm not to concerned about loosehead, as surprising as that may seem given that we are losing Court.

WP Nel is a seriously good tighthead and Callum Black made him look like an amateur tonight.

Callum also may have got away with scrummaging at an angle. In fairness to him I think he tried to start straight and then realised he could get away with it as Nel was constantly standing up with no sanction.  I still would pick angry Tom but its great to have such an able backup

A good game tonight, and great to get the TBP. What about McKinney then? He had a great game.Grew into it as the game went on, as did the team as a whole. Some boot on him  
Soooo good to see Gilroy back, and in good form.
Cave is my MOTM though. Thought he was fantastic this evening, and showing yet again that he is the form 13 in Ireland.

Watching the recording back. Two additional points to those already made.

Paul Marshall was also good.

And I really like Neil Hennessey. Clear, no-nonsense. Excellent communicator. Wastes no time in calling holding on, and I like the way he calls advantage.

Just read an Anscombe interview grading the injuries.

Henderson is a hamstring so it's just assessing how bad
Muller could be fit next week but early days
Sounds like nick is gone for a few weeks (anscombe worried it will be 6) 
Stevenson a ligament injury so no for next week
Marshall just bad cramp
Cave nothing serious
Allen a bang on the jaw

All in all it seems the back 5 of the pack will be seriously stretched. Muller back next week would be great but it seems last nights backrow is the best we can hope for, for a while

Watch the game again Cave, Tuohy and Black were very good to.

Next week Tuohy, Muller (hopefully), Diack, Wilson, Doyle/McCormish

Doyle I have to say was the one big disappointment did very little
Needs to buck up if he wants to stay

Wouldn't be adverse to giving Neil McComb a start if it means we can get Muller 100% for the Heineken Cup.

Was Payne injured, or just rested?

Injured I think.

? Groin again?

Excellent performance- Diack had his best game in an Ulster jersey - McKinney, Cave, Gilroy, Paul Marshall and Touhy all stood out too. Disappointing to leak the tries at the end but the attacking play was outstanding at times.

Rob Kearney's days are numbered in the Irish 15 jersey if Gilroy keeps this form up...

Gilroy did spend most of the game on the wing, but he was excellent under the high ball and he and Andrew did interchange a lot- Gilroy looked very assured whenever he had to deal with Edinburghs long kicking and very assured positionally which is something that he's really improved upon since he's come into the team.

Ricky Andrew had his best game for Ulster.

Payne got a groin strain against scarlets and was just given a week extra. He will be back was the message. Doyles tackle stats were pretty good and only Diack tackled more. Definitely worth his place for my mind as we totally won the breakdown.

Muller is the one anscombe said he wasn't sure on yet

Notch wrote:Wouldn't be adverse to giving Neil McComb a start if it means we can get Muller 100% for the Heineken Cup.

On the strength of his performance against Scarlets NO

A candidate for the worst performance in an Ulster shirt this season.

I'd rather see Diack in the second row and McCormish at 6

rodders wrote:Excellent performance- Diack had his best game in an Ulster jersey - McKinney, Cave, Gilroy, Paul Marshall and Touhy all stood out too. Disappointing to leak the tries at the end but the attacking play was outstanding at times.

Rob Kearney's days are numbered in the Irish 15 jersey if Gilroy keeps this form up...

Gilroy play 60 minutes of the game on the wing and looked a much better player for it.
He is only a 15 backup

Standulstermen wrote: Doyles tackle stats were pretty good and only Diack tackled more. Definitely worth his place for my mind as we totally won the breakdown.

This is where I don't trust statistics

We did dominate breakdown I don't think Doyle was any special in that regard - we have Diack to thank for that who was excellent.
To clarify I would probably still start Doyle at 7 next week for balance

Yeah. I'm not suggesting he was stellar. Just that it boils down to him or McComish

Agreed and as I suggest I would probably give him the benefit of the doubt.

He need to improve if he wants to be hear next year though

Doyle did well enough for his first game back (and on the back of a couple of MOTM performances for the Ravens) - certainly enough to warrant inclusion for Zebre.

Read another forum Stevenson and Henderson both out for several weeks!

Makes it all the more important we give Muller the cotton wool treatment to get him ready for the Treviso games. So frustrating.

Notch wrote:Read another forum Stevenson and Henderson both out for several weeks! Makes it all the more important we give Muller the cotton wool treatment to get him ready for the Treviso games. So frustrating.

When you have lots of injuries like this, you can't risk rushing guys back and having them break down with injury again. Otherwise we'll end up in the same hole as last year.

McComb for Italy.

I would pick despite his underwhelming form as we need Diack in the backrow.

I don't get McComb. He is 6'8" and plenty of power, pace of an 8 and captained teams, yet he has the persona of a novice girl guide...

McComb is a big softee.

Nice guy absolutely no fire in his belly.
I kid you not a mate of my thumped him on the pitch and his reaction was 'Sorry what did I do'

A big Cat cat

geoff999rugby wrote:McComb is a big softee.

Nice guy absolutely no fire in his belly.
I kid you not a mate of my thumped him on the pitch and his reaction was 'Sorry what did I do'

A big Cat cat

 

Look how passive the Edinburgh defence is in the build up to our first try;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKnJqjSayX0

Kicking long to our back three and then standing off and passively drifting was their downfall.

Rory broken arm

I fear injuries could wreck our season now

geoff999rugby wrote:Rory broken arm

I fear injuries could wreck our season now

 

It's just whether he needs surgery or not is the main thing.

Not sure that would be the most critical indicator of recovery time.

The type of fracture is more important.

Of course, a complicated fracture may be more likely to require surgical intervention but it isn't the surgery itself which is likely to predict recovery time.

I bow to your obviously superior expertise.

Not easy to predict how long he'll be unavailable for given the lack of details but certainly won't be seeing him again in 2013 (I infer)

Maybe we need to get him on the Tommy Bowe Milk diet!

I dunno, we seem to have a bit of a bad habit of rushing players back!

We need him in May. Lot of injuries but i have faith in the other two hookers we have to make sure we don't fall away. Rob Herring I like a lot as a player, no Rory, but a good player.

Brtoken arm? roughly 4 weeks until its back in one piece, 8 weeks for it to be reasonably strong, 12 weeks to be as good as new - thats assuming no complications and is only approximate. So I would expect him back in 8-12 weeks

Clean break. Not sure which bone.
They are saying 4 -12 weeks

It's still the back 5 of the pack that is the worry and our breakdown will suffer without Henry and Best. That said I would back a Court/Herrin/Afoa front row against treviso. We need muller back and fit because we have no depth in the row or backrow. Realistically in both these areas we are running on fumes with no great options on the bench. 

Our backs aren't actually looking too bad with PJ, Pienaar, Wallace all coming back soon and Payne fit this week fingers crossed.

I've recorded the game but haven't brought myself to watch it yet. Sounds like we were badly beaten at the breakdown, and I've not doubt threw in a few silly errors as well. It also sounds like Ulster played really well.

Surprised to hear the scrum didn't go well. I expected Nel, Lutui and Blaauw to be solid. Pleased to hear Rennie's comeback is continuing. Hopefully we can get him up to speed for the derby fixtures and then the 6 Nations. Also pleased to hear that Atiga turned up and that Sam Beard came off the bench and looked useful.

Still, not a great scoreline, and I thought we'd be more competitive than that if I'm being honest, notwithstanding the fact that we fielded Jack Cuthbert against Craig Gilroy!!

Whens Henry back? Will he be fit for the 6 nations?

FES - it is a bad scoreline but probably worth a watch if you have some spare time. As I said there were some decent individual performances and good bits of play, we just couldn't string it together into a team performance.

Ulster would be one of the better scrummaging sides in the league now, matching up to most in Europe on top form. Everyone knows about John Afoa, but Callum Black is a very good technical prop who's hard to shift and the back five of our pack work exceptionally hard.

By my VERY ROUGH calculation

Muller 1/2 weeks
Wallace - early Dec
McAllister - early Dec
Henry - Mid Dec
Williams - late Dec
Henderson - New Year
Stevenson - New Year
Best - Mid Jan ** very very provisional
Ferris - Mid Feb
Olding - Next Year

That a hell of a pack we have on the physio table

FES, if you watch the the tries you conceded you can see there was some less than stellar long kicking to our most dangerous players, passive defence and some poor mistakes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKnJqjSayX0&list=PLh8UUse1EOvA0mujykDWi__HaEAvJRS1k&index=1

geoff998rugby wrote:By my VERY ROUGH calculation

Muller 1/2 weeks
Wallace - early Dec
McAllister - early Dec
Henry - Mid Dec
Williams - late Dec
Henderson - New Year
Stevenson - New Year
Best - Mid Jan ** very very provisional
Ferris - Mid Feb
Olding - Next Year

That a hell of a pack we have on the physio table

Our backrow is feiced for the Heineken Cup then... gloom.