Dharper wrote: ↑Sat Dec 19, 2020 6:42 pm
U aren’t winning in England with 2 second rows having to go a full game, good games or not. MC was a big miss re leadership.....but the engine room was a killer. Too many easy access points for Gloucester - but ultimately lineout maul scrum deficiencies kill you all day long. Carter Henderson and to a lesser extent Treadwells ban holed us before the game.
Agree with a lot of that, when the locks are probably 4th and 5th choice for the big games. Reidy is a great impact player at this level, but not a starter. Personally I dont think Matty Rea or Jones are at this level and we should be looking at more game time for the likes of McCann and Allison if fit.
Carter had been marshalling the lineout superbly, even against Toulouse last week. That was missed today.
Great spirit and fight back led by Cooney who was superb but hugely frustrating to lose that.
Hopefully Matty Rea’s last game in an ulster shirt. Like you say, let’s give McCann and Allison game time.
Eric,AOC and DOC still on the pitch at 80mins says a lot.
We are out of an already terrible Heineken cup format,let’s move on and win the Pro12/14/16.
Dharper wrote: ↑Sat Dec 19, 2020 6:42 pm
U aren’t winning in England with 2 second rows having to go a full game, good games or not. MC was a big miss re leadership.....but the engine room was a killer. Too many easy access points for Gloucester - but ultimately lineout maul scrum deficiencies kill you all day long. Carter Henderson and to a lesser extent Treadwells ban holed us before the game.
Agree with a lot of that, when the locks are probably 4th and 5th choice for the big games. Reidy is a great impact player at this level, but not a starter. Personally I dont think Matty Rea or Jones are at this level and we should be looking at more game time for the likes of McCann and Allison if fit.
Carter had been marshalling the lineout superbly, even against Toulouse last week. That was missed today.
Great spirit and fight back led by Cooney who was superb but hugely frustrating to lose that.
Hopefully Matty Rea’s last game in an ulster shirt. Like you say, let’s give McCann and Allison game time.
Eric,AOC and DOC still on the pitch at 80mins says a lot.
We are out of an already terrible Heineken cup format,let’s move on and win the Pro12/14/16.
Well said that man.
I'm not arguing -
I'm just explaining why I'm right
To be fair I only heard it on the radio, but there were clear omens in the build up re selection. If your basics aren’t solid you’re knackered in Europe, our engine room was 4/5 choice & no backup. Clearly that effects in game decisions re lineout, penalties for lineout, maul defence, and scrum power/fatigue - neither lads (are particularly big). When things aren’t solid, players then Make stupid decisions they wouldn’t make otherwise- which compound things (penalties).
I’m not blaming either O’Connor far from it. Dan has bolstered the front row, backrow appears to be slowly coming through - quality is still a moot point. My main concern is we are a “feck unit” short in the row. Squad depth is still a big issue. Can’t they find a farmer in Fermanagh?
I have no doubt in a month (if it goes ahead) we’ll do a job on Gloucester with carter treadwell & Coetzee in the mix.
I loved an article with Sam Arnold last week. He said he was offered a contract by Munster but left for Connacht as he felt his career had stalled and Didn’t want to have regrets as a 50 yr old in the pub, & said there was lots of 26/27 yr olds going through the motions.
Had we had a Quinn Roux type we’d have squeezed it out.
I’m incessantly angry at the ref giving the Stockdale high ball effort as a knock back in play but then reviewing it for a knock on once Cooney had scored. Grgh.
1 Great game, neither side deserved to lose,
2 To win a 10 minute period with 13 men by 3-0 was as good character as I’ve seen,
3 I fail to see why a shoulder rammed into an unprotected kidney was seen as anything other than a yellow
4 Why the **** did Timoney keep running from an offside position with the ref screaming at Nr 8 to stop?
5 I think we wus lucky for the for 4th try not to be deemed a knock on by Stockdale
6 The dander will be well up for the league now
7 Why did we not stuff it up the jumper in the last two minutes with 14 men?
8 Not as annoyed as I probably should be, reckoning without doing the Math that we were going into the second tier anyway with all those winning bonus points by others
9 If anyone could post a link to the McFarland post match interview, I’d really appreciate it
Marco wrote: ↑Sat Dec 19, 2020 7:35 pm
For what it’s worth, my observations
5 I think we wus lucky for the for 4th try not to be deemed a knock on by Stockdale
No more lucky than they wus for their first which could just as easily have had a forward pass called on the long pass, and the grounding also looked very dubious.
Ref stuck with his on-field decision because TMO couldn't find an angle that showed the ball held up. Same as he stuck with his on-field decision on Jacob because TMO couldn't show definitively that it was a knock on.
Certainly no luckier than their final score either.
I might have mentioned this before, maybe not, but watch again, and you'll see that he knocked it on before sliding over the line.
I'm not arguing -
I'm just explaining why I'm right
Capt you are of course joking the referee is not just incompetent but dangerous he didn’t even penalise the only red card offence in the game .
In over 60 years of watching referees he was without doubt the most obviously biased . With 5 minutes to go I knew Gloucester were going to win by virtue of the referee .
Watch the last try you can nearly see his jubilation in his haste to award it and I am not the only one who considers that the ball was knocked on before the line . The ball came out of the players hands and was on the ground before it was regathered .
Did the ball strike Mcilroys knee before he knocked on - if so it should only have been deemed a knock on and not a knock on/ down try denial? Since McIllroy was the last player to play the ball before the knock on.
Within this carapace of skepticism there lives an optimist
rumncoke wrote: ↑Sat Dec 19, 2020 7:50 pm
Capt you are of course joking
Me? Joking?
Shirley not.
rumncoke wrote: ↑Sat Dec 19, 2020 7:50 pm
Watch the last try you can nearly see his jubilation in his haste to award it and I am not the only one who considers that the ball was knocked on before the line . The ball came out of the players hands and was on the ground before it was regathered .
Really?
I must have missed that.
rumncoke wrote: ↑Sat Dec 19, 2020 7:50 pm
Did the ball strike Mcilroys knee before he knocked on
No. I thought that from one angle, but other angles seemed to me to to show hand first.
Ref actually got that one right.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day though.
I'm not arguing -
I'm just explaining why I'm right
I imagine the video review of the game will be uncomfortable.
I have mixed thoughts re the result: any win away in Europe is great for experience / development ( I actually wasn’t bothered re Euro cup this yr due to the nature of it) but actually would it have papered over cracks in the squad? Can some of the players actually learn from this - more importantly has Dan learnt about some of the players. We needed clear game management last 5 mins. Who stepped up, were we naive?
