URC Round 5

First topic message reminder :

Round five and the last round before the international break, I'm sure all teams will want to get a win this weekend to give them a good feeling considering they don't play again until near the end of November.

Round 5 Fixtures- All times BST and all games also available on Supersport, URC TV and Premier Sports.

FRIDAY, 22ND OCTOBER

Scarlets v Benetton – KO 19.35 S4C, Mediaset
Glasgow Warriors v Leinster – KO 19.35- TG4

SATURDAY, 23ND OCTOBER

Zebre v Edinburgh – KO 13.00- Mediaset
Connacht v Ulster – KO 17.15- TG4
Cardiff v Dragons – KO 17.15
Ospreys v Munster – KO 19.35- S4C, RTÉ 2

The South African sides are not playing this weekend, they will play their round 5 derbies v each other at a later date

And Dillane rightly heads for the bin also.

Connacht back row looking very sharp.

On the other hand, their line out a shambles. That must be three or four lost throws now.

Great catch and drive from Ulster and pass to put Balacounne away. Unlucky with his kick forward into touch.

Good first half from the Westerners as they go in 17-6 at the break.
Dragons after taking an early lead are now trailing the Blues 18-14.

Good half in Cardiff. Dragons are at least showing intent in a derby, for once.

Cardiff are on top in the scrums, but hopefully Bateman coming on will sort that a little.

Connacht get a penalty on halfway - Carty elects for the posts. Every point matters in this one.

He misses though.

Neither side giving an inch. Ulster smashing Connacht back in tackles in midfield.

Cardiff red card.

Another second half no show then.

Connacht in superb form. Two tries in five minutes gives them the TBP.

Ulster have just got their first try of the game.

29-11 with 12 minutes to go.

I do feel like Dragons didn’t deserve to win that due to the second half, so to take two points from it, isn’t the worst thing in the world. Discipline was poor from Dragons and a bit of immaturity again. Shanklin likes to talk about Dragons piggybacking errors on Premier a lot. Half the time I think it’s unjustified, but we’ve proved him right tonight.

Frustrating that we’ve lost due to that awful Sam Davies penalty miss though, despite a victory being undeserved.

Connacht absolutely superb and ran out comfortable winners with Hansen getting his second on the night - 36-11.

Great response from Friend and his squad in the toughest URC pool.

Ulster pretty much played how they have been playing this season but came up against much better opposition than before, work to be done

So good weekend for Welsh teams with no internationals picking up 16pts between them.

No great for Munster and Ulster who lose.

Edinburgh the surprise team in 4th.

Probably Dragons biggest loser as the teams around them won (except Benetton who matched them).

Brilliant result for Ospreys. Great to see.

neilthom7 wrote:Ulster pretty much played how they have been playing this season but came up against much better opposition than before, work to be done

Spot on with this. Ulster got a good schedule to start with especially with their players missing. I also think one or two of the younger players are overrated but I'll reserve judgement for the time being.

Exactly Neil. And disappointing in that most fans could tell that Ulster were very under cooked in their previous games so far this season, and yet the coaching seem to have been unable to get a better performance out of them when we knew it would be toughest.

We just folded under a half decent well organised team.

Well played Connacht, good performance. But from an Ulster perspective, we currently seem to be performing worse that the last two seasons.

Maine man wrote:

neilthom7 wrote:Ulster pretty much played how they have been playing this season but came up against much better opposition than before, work to be done

Spot on with this. Ulster got a good schedule to start with especially with their players missing. I also think one or two of the younger players are overrated but I'll reserve judgement for the time being.

They did beat Glasgow which was a good result.

For some reason Connacht seem to get these results against Ulster.

Meh, we almost had it at Cardiff. Good to get the 2 points though, rather than nothing. Haven’t seen the Ospreys game but that was an unexpected result, a good win

Yeah the Ospreys have come in for a lot of flak, and they are not playing exciting rugby, but what are they? 4 wins from 5 or something? Not bad for a team playing poorly. So credit there for sure

RiscaGame wrote:I do feel like Dragons didn’t deserve to win that due to the second half, so to take two points from it, isn’t the worst thing in the world. Discipline was poor from Dragons and a bit of immaturity again. Shanklin likes to talk about Dragons piggybacking errors on Premier a lot. Half the time I think it’s unjustified, but we’ve proved him right tonight.

Frustrating that we’ve lost due to that awful Sam Davies penalty miss though, despite a victory being undeserved.

That's a bit of revisionism regarding just that penalty.

As soon as Cardiff went to 14 they just played the corners and the clock. Had the scoreboard been different at that time, so would have been their reaction.

Well played, Ospreys. Very professional performance against munster. Looks like they didn't take munster too lightly like the Scarlets did the other week.


Connacht v Ulster was a cracker. Ulster had an off day and Connacht were up for it like they usually are for derbies.

Interesting power rankings by Two Cents Rugby. I reckon it might take a few more gameweeks until we know the real positioning of the SA teams.

Only just got around to watching Ospreys vs Munster, I wasn't expecting much but it was very intense. Ospreys did exactly what was required by giving Munster a taste of their own medicine, which they obviously didn't like given the amount of pathetic whinging from them. POM really is a big sh*/house

This game also makes the decision to have Rhodri Jones over Nicky Smith look even more daft.

Was nice to see if only to prove that other sides in the URC can beat Irish sides. Not that any of the punditry or podcasts thought it was anything less than Munster playing poorly.

The Irish commentary and pundits at times is staggering. The only nation other than them currently at this end of the extreme is New Zealand who equally feel some sort of divine right to win matches. I dislike this sort of arrogance.

I personally don't buy this myth that the Irish are better than us Welsh. I would argue our semi pro game is substantially stronger in Wales than in Ireland. The issue for me is more fundamental. A lack of quality coaches/managers. We have had a habit of hiring inexperienced head coaches who have no experience in selecting and developing players.

In truth we have had a poor set of managers in charge who rarely have planned for the long term. At least Booth and Ryan have at least adjusted for this. Peel should never have been given the keys to a Welsh Region with the biggest budget of wages. Surely at this point we should know that you need to bring in an experienced quality head coach who has a track record of developing players and bringing youth through. Granted Peel might work out but the fact we are picking candidates without any top level experience just highlights the issue.

My point on the Scarlets is this. If money was a deciding factor for success then given the wage spent by the West Welsh compared to every other URC side then they should be at 3/4th in the league every season. Only Munster and Leinster have bigger salaries (Ulster while I cannot find any data to find out their actual spends are probably close).

Scarlets at this point need a total overhaul. Be interesting to see if Peel is strong enough as a coach to make those amount of changes.

mikey_dragon wrote:Only just got around to watching Ospreys vs Munster, I wasn't expecting much but it was very intense. Ospreys did exactly what was required by giving Munster a taste of their own medicine, which they obviously didn't like given the amount of pathetic whinging from them. POM really is a big sh*/house

This game also makes the decision to have Rhodri Jones over Nicky Smith look even more daft.

I had heard about O'Mahony. It's a shame he has this need to try and act hard, because it comes across as him being more of a dirty player than an enforcer type or whatever.

Ospreys were the first non Irish team in the league to end both Leinster and Munster 20+ winning run against non Irish sides.

Ospreys don't score many tries but will be difficult come the tight games.