Pro 12: Edinburgh Rugby vs Ulster Rugby Fri 16th Oct

First topic message reminder :

              
Edinburgh Rugby v Ulster Rugby
Friday 16th October 2015, KO 19:45
BT Murrayfield

TV - Live on Sky

Referee: Dudley Phillips (IRFU, 52nd competition game)
Assistant Referees: Sam Grove-White, Mike Adamson (both SRU)
Citing Commissioner: Iain Goodall (SRU)
TMO: Iain Ramage (SRU)

Form:

Edinburgh
Last 3 Matches
2/10/15 Edinburgh 20 - 9 Ospreys
12/9/15 Treviso 24 - 27 Edinburgh
4/9/15 Edinburgh 16 - 9 Leinster

Ulster
Last 3 Matches
2/10/15 Ulster 48 - 7 Treviso
12/9/15 Scarlets 22 - 12 Ulster
4/9/15 Ulster 28 - 6 Ospreys

TEAMS:

Edinburgh Rugby

15 Greig Tonks
14 Tom Brown
13 Chris Dean
12 Andries Strauss
11 Damien Hoyland
10 Phil Burleigh
9 Nathan Fowles

1 Rory Sutherland
2 Neil Cochrane
3 John Andress
4 Anton Bresler
5 Fraser McKenzie
6 Mike Coman (capt)
7 Hamish Watson
8 Nasi Manu

16 George Turner
17 Allan Dell
18 Simon Berghan
19 Alex Toolis
20 Cornell Du Preez
21 Sean Kennedy
22 Will Helu
23 Jack Cuthbert

Ulster Rugby

(15-9): Louis Ludik; Craig Gilroy, Sammy Arnold, Stuart McCloskey, Andrew Trimble; Peter Nelson, Paul Marshall; (1-8): Callum Black, Rob Herring (captain), Wiehahn Herbst, Dan Tuohy, Franco van der Merwe, Roger Wilson, Sean Reidy, Nick Williams;

Replacements (16-23): John Andrew, Andrew Warwick, Bronson Ross, Lewis Stevenson, Willie Faloon, David Shanahan, Ian Humphreys, Rory Scholes.

What was the score - I am just back from Scotstoun ?

Edinburgh won 16-10

Well done - is that you top now ?

A few more points from last night:

Chris Dean went off at HT again - I don't think he's lasted a full game yet without being injured. Helu looked a lot more dangerous when he came on - his place may be under threat

Apparently Du Preez replaced Coman on 55 minutes - did anyone notice??

I thought our defence - specifically our tackling - was outstanding. We were incredibly physical and smashed them back in the tackle regularly, often double teaming. Changed days from our porous defence of previous years.

Watson was superb but not perfect - he was turned over 3 times by being held up in a maul. Because he's not the biggest he can't get himself in those positions - people will start to target him.

There was a bit of discussion about Andress leading up to the game - I thought he had a strong game. Held up the scrum well and put in some big hits. Our front 5 in general were excellent - McKenzie had his best game for a while and Cochrane is such a solid player for us.

Could Edinburgh get in trouble for playing a front row player out of position? The players have not exactly tried to hide it after the game - Turner hasn't played loosehead in his life! Or because the player agreed to it does that make it ok?

For all the talk of Edinburgh being more expansive this season, we're yet to see it. The game plan is as conservative as it has always been, and not the most exciting to watch. We're winning, but I can't see us getting many 4 try bp's which could make the difference in the league.

Decent 4300 crowd tonight, although we always get a lot of Ulster fans at these games.

Surely Andress should have come on again and and one of him or Berghan should have been shifted to loosehead?

Andress was maybe injured - Berghan was subbed on 66 minutes which is most unlike Solomons!

Well done to Edinburgh - Solly has organised an awesome defence that will keep you in games.

Regarding Turner is he a 'suitably trained and experienced player' to play loosehead prop as required by the Laws if he has never played there before?

Can someone explain to me why Trimble was giving the team talk at half time.
I'll make a prediction - Doak and Clarke will not be with us this time next year

We're counting the days until Les Kiss gets here. But he needs to bring in a forwards coach who knows how to coach the breakdown- our lineout, scrum and maul are fine but we are shockingly amateur in how we approach the breakdown. Body position is terrible, we are constantly giving away needless penalties due to going off our feet or in at the side, we are incredibly slow to get there. Longstanding issues that have basically never been addressed. If the current coaches knew how to do anything about it, they would have done something about it by now.

If Clarke stays, he should stay as scrum coach only. He seems to actually be able to coach that area- but when it comes to open play? Useless.

geoff999rugby wrote:Can someone explain to me why Trimble was giving the team talk at half time.
I'll make a prediction - Doak and Clarke will not be with us this time next year

I noticed that last night. Seemed a bit odd that Trimble was doing all the chatting.

I hope you're right about Doak and Clarke. Another really poor performance. Our maul was a complete shambles, as was our breakdown work without Henry and Best.

What channel was the game on? I couldn't see it on my BT package. Even the Garlic language channel had some other pish on it.
Which leads me to my main point- if you haven't done so before, listen to a game on Radio Scotland. Bill Johnston is hopeless as you never know which team has the ball but Peter Wright is hilarious. He is like an even grumpier Brian Moore.

Sky Sports

That explains, Notch.
It didn't sound like I missed much. Breakdown was a bit of a shambles and not much in the way of flowing rugby. How many players are you guys missing because of the WC?

7 Ulster players in the Irish squad

And Pienaar with South Africa, as Notch reminded me when asked the same question

InjuredYetAgain wrote:That explains, Notch.
It didn't sound like I missed much. Breakdown was a bit of a shambles and not much in the way of flowing rugby. How many players are you guys missing because of the WC?

It was a classic modern day Edinburgh win - strong set piece and in the rucks, organised and physical defence, incredibly boring style of play with very little attacking intent shown - Helu's good work on the lead up to the try was very much off the cuff. I'm sure that'll be coached out of him soon enough though!

Really shouldn't be complaining about 4 from 4, but like last season I can't see us having much of a plan b when we come up against a team that matches us up front.

RDW_Scotland wrote:

InjuredYetAgain wrote:That explains, Notch.
It didn't sound like I missed much. Breakdown was a bit of a shambles and not much in the way of flowing rugby. How many players are you guys missing because of the WC?

It was a classic modern day Edinburgh win - strong set piece and in the rucks, organised and physical defence, incredibly boring style of play with very little attacking intent shown - Helu's good work on the lead up to the try was very much off the cuff. I'm sure that'll be coached out of him soon enough though!

Really shouldn't be complaining about 4 from 4, but like last season I can't see us having much of a plan b when we come up against a team that matches us up front.

You Edinburgh fans really are hard to please! Do you really prefer playing pretty rugby every week and losing? The first thing any good team has to do is to make themselves hard to beat, Edinburgh are getting there on that front. The right to flair has to be earned the hard way. The try they scored to win the match was top drawer stuff. They were playing Ulster, this was never a 5 pointer!

BigGee wrote:

RDW_Scotland wrote:

InjuredYetAgain wrote:That explains, Notch.
It didn't sound like I missed much. Breakdown was a bit of a shambles and not much in the way of flowing rugby. How many players are you guys missing because of the WC?

It was a classic modern day Edinburgh win - strong set piece and in the rucks, organised and physical defence, incredibly boring style of play with very little attacking intent shown - Helu's good work on the lead up to the try was very much off the cuff. I'm sure that'll be coached out of him soon enough though!

Really shouldn't be complaining about 4 from 4, but like last season I can't see us having much of a plan b when we come up against a team that matches us up front.

You Edinburgh fans really are hard to please! Do you really prefer playing pretty rugby every week and losing? The first thing any good team has to do is to make themselves hard to beat, Edinburgh are getting there on that front. The right to flair has to be earned the hard way. The try they scored to win the match was top drawer stuff. They were playing Ulster, this was never a 5 pointer!

I agree on all points and I'm very much picking holes, but I'm sure you'll agree with me that the problem of having very little attacking threat is that if you don't get ascendancy up front you're going to struggle - as we saw against Gloucester.

Don't get me wrong if we carry on in this regard and finish top 6 I'll be delighted. We actually threw the ball around a lot against Leinster but went back to type all the other games.

And as I said our try came from a moment of off the cuff magic from Helu - I was partially joking that those kind of things will be coached out of him, but given Hidalgo-Clyne has said in the past that he was being coached to not take any quick taps at Edinburgh it sadly holds some truth!

Oh is Diack injured by the way he wasn't playing last night. Heard about luke marshall and obviously about Olding but never heard Diack was out. If he wasn't injured then not playing him at 6 was idiotic

RDW_Scotland wrote:

BigGee wrote:

RDW_Scotland wrote:

InjuredYetAgain wrote:That explains, Notch.
It didn't sound like I missed much. Breakdown was a bit of a shambles and not much in the way of flowing rugby. How many players are you guys missing because of the WC?

It was a classic modern day Edinburgh win - strong set piece and in the rucks, organised and physical defence, incredibly boring style of play with very little attacking intent shown - Helu's good work on the lead up to the try was very much off the cuff. I'm sure that'll be coached out of him soon enough though!

Really shouldn't be complaining about 4 from 4, but like last season I can't see us having much of a plan b when we come up against a team that matches us up front.

You Edinburgh fans really are hard to please! Do you really prefer playing pretty rugby every week and losing? The first thing any good team has to do is to make themselves hard to beat, Edinburgh are getting there on that front. The right to flair has to be earned the hard way. The try they scored to win the match was top drawer stuff. They were playing Ulster, this was never a 5 pointer!

I agree on all points and I'm very much picking holes, but I'm sure you'll agree with me that the problem of having very little attacking threat is that if you don't get ascendancy up front you're going to struggle - as we saw against Gloucester.

Don't get me wrong if we carry on in this regard and finish top 6 I'll be delighted. We actually threw the ball around a lot against Leinster but went back to type all the other games.

And as I said our try came from a moment of off the cuff magic from Helu - I was partially joking that those kind of things will be coached out of him, but given Hidalgo-Clyne has said in the past that he was being coached to not take any quick taps at Edinburgh it sadly holds some truth!

Edinburgh are probably just a playmaker away from having a decent backline. Burleigh for all his positives, is clearly not that man. There is plenty of flair further out. Brown, Hoyland, Helu all look very promising, Dean has looked decent in flashes if he can ever last a full game. Tonks is not the answer either, he is a much better FB than a FH. It does make you wonder why they did not try to hang on to Heathcote, at least for another season, he looked like he played well for Worcester on Friday night. Maybe they just are going to have to settle with what they have got this year while they bring on the youngsters a bit more. It is still progress!