Ulster v Saints - Positives and Negatives

[launish116]

wounded animal is always dangerous! that a side saints came at us with all there grunt and only beat us by 1 point! not to mention there try was scored by a head butt... harsh considering trimble should of took him lower!

anyone thinking we got smacked last night needs to rethink, 20+ errors and only 1 point difference as well as playing pretty basic rugby against a dominant pack! handling errors a side maybe this what we needed! time to get grounded again to see we arn't unbeatable and as the comentators said about clermonts home record undefeated runs are like mental noose's! the team now know how it feels to loose at home and will not want that feeling again!

[Jackie Brown]

Fair play to Saints but it was hard to take the opposition doing a lap of honour at the Hill to their song. I stood and applauded them but it was tough. I hope the guys bottle that feeling and use it to good effect.

Never again

[CIMANFOREVER]

Main problem I have is that Mark didn't freshen things up earlier when it was obvious we were FUBAR.
Still, we've won the head to head vs Saints if it comes down to it; Saints now have something to play for against Castres, and we at least got The LBP. I always seen this pool as 3 sides losing two matches each... thought ours would be away tbh.

We were poor in all aspects, and got beat by one point by a limited top 3 AP side. We butchered at least 3 clear try scoring opportunities, and could've won by 10 points. Its fine line between clever and stupid... basically, will we see all 15 play as poorly again?
Covered quite comprehensively here, but I come back to the same point(s) of real concern;

Our front row management is a mess imo.
JA is being shagged senseless- Saints had basically two full front rows to play and freshen up- and trusted to play in an HEC tie- even with Hartley missing. We have a good young hooker with the best darts in the club playing for the Ravens, and Nigel Brady not used. We have one serially injured TH and another again playing and scoring for the Ravens. We have a Loosehead covering at TH on an HEC match with 1(?) Ulster appearance to cover JA, who's now basically doing an 80min shift against two Loosies, week in week out. Next week HEALEY ffs... this is madness (not Le Grand Pantalon I may add...)
Court has went well, but Black should've been on earlier to freshen up.
I'll also confront the Elephant in the room- Rory's darts have the unerring ability to implode under pressure... the one real flaw in his game, and one that could yet jeopardise his Lions jersey. Herring from what I've seen, is the more accomplished thrower, although not yet tested under a real HEC pressure cooker. He's also a tight scrummager.

Back Five: I felt the move of Henderson to second row was wrong, and haven't changed my mind. He's a couple of years off that level. Physically, compare him to Etzebeth who's the same vintage, but much much more developed. Hendo is more effective at 6, and should stay there. Williams is not a full 70-80min player. McComb should've started for the ballast to match Saints. I said as such in previous posts, although hindsights a wonderful thing.

9, 10, 12; Felt this was changed too late by MA. Neither PJ nor PW were at full tilt last night- it happens, although both were defensively on the money as usual. (Note if PW had a perforated eardrum, should he have started? It affects balance badly- had them myself) But again felt we churned the bench too late.
Both Marshalls are champing at the bit, and made a difference, even if giving Saints something different when plan A didn't work. Love him or loathe him, Smallp does have the capacity to do something different, and again last night took a risk that nearly paid off- one criticism of RP was that he was predictable- efficient but predictable- never once felt he was going to break himself.

Hey, one of those nights- mixed feelings losing to a team I despise, rather than Ladyboi's or Turnips, first. Hey ho.

I think the next 3 weeks are going to be pretty tight imo... due to injuries and the fact that our front liners ain't going to get a break now. Wouldn't be surprised to see us go down in both Derbies. Or hopefully, the monkey gone, we play with more expression, and a bit of freedom.

LS, DF, etc can't come back quick enough; hope that JM is a quick healer, and pray to whatever God or Darwin that TB and SF play again before March. Talking to a guy from UR last night, he reckoned serious ligament damage
We're down to the bare bones in the areas that win matches, and one injury or suspension away from catastrophe (JA).
Agree as well that with so many experienced players, including an Irish captain, we seem to lack REAL leadership when it counts.
With all of the emotion of the season so far (lets not forget the most important and significant event this season so far, way above any rugby match) maybe its not unexpected that many of our guys are running on empty mentally? Lets get a bit of perspective here, and no "they're pro rugby players, its their job.." type sh*te..

Final moan; level of expectation at Hill is now ridiculous- the amount of ignorant crap spouted by people who've never played the game meaningfully is getting embarrassing and painful. Was at Memorial end for my sins, and the rubbish regarding our pack getting mullered in the scrums, missed tackles etc.. made me mad. Cries of "take him off" if a tackle was missed, ball dropped etc.. was sickening and ridiculous. The price of success I suppose- least we didn't have a Fleg protest from some of our newer fans....

[Joe Schmo]

Feck me sideways now we are into which side of the stadium has the best supporters, Ruckover, with you on the Henderson thing he is not a second row and that showed last night, but Snipe is never wrong ever ever ever.

Sideways? Just stick with your usual technique Kofi, but make sure you use plenty of lube!

[jackthelad]

Now we have lost big time,i can see a long slippery slope coming.

We lost by 1 point, missed 3 penalties and blew 2 or 3 try opportunities - one or two were not exactly clear cut but were doable. This sort of stuff happens. I wouldn't call it having 'lost big time'. That's what happened to Saints last week. I'm pretty sure if you had offered the guys 6 points from the head to head games they would have been reasonably happy.
We are on 15 points. Beat Weegies puts us on 19 or 20.
It will all boil down to Saints v. Castres.
I'm pretty sure Castres will win today putting them on 12 points but I can't see them getting much out of Saints. A b.p win for Saints would take them to 15 while we could be on 19 or 20 going in to the final game. This puts the pressure on Ulster to win away in France, not just to win the group but to get a home q.f. Saints are unlikely to get 5 points from Glasgae away from home. Even a l.b.p. in France would put us on 20 or 21 points.

Going in to the final round I expect Ulster to be on 19 /20 points.
Saints to be on 14 / 15.
Castres to be on 12 /13.
If that is the case we can only lose out if a) Saints get two bonus point wins and b) we fail to get to 20 points. If we end up even on points then we win on the head to head results. In that scenario however we lose home q.f. probably.

[BuckRogers]

Plenty of negatives for once, the only positive I can cling to is that this provides a timely boot up the Brennan. I wonder how the squad will react to a real dose of adversity-the loss coupled with the injuries we have suffered.

[lovesthehardground]

Had been worried beforehand by MA not freshening things up and as it turned out I think that what beat us the most. Big mistake to think that we could just show up at Ravenhill and win. The way the team played was incredibly poor, running the ball wide without establishing forward dominance. But then I don't think we had the pack to do that and thats where the biggest problem was.

Henderson is not heavy enough to play 2nd row. Against a team that grunts it up front we should have expected a battle there and played McComb. That would have added to our scrum. In addition by moving Henderson into the 2nd row we disrupted the balance we had in the backrow last week. Williams is not a 6!

We lost the scrum and we also lost the breakdown. Yes we had scoring opportunities and yes we made a lot of mistakes. But in all honesty if we had won last night it would have been a steal and undeserved. Northampton were the better side much as it pains me to say.

Another negative last night was the reluctance to make substitutions. Marshall should have been on for Paddy much earlier. Gilroy did well when he came on but why take Trimble off? He and Bowe were playing well but what about Payne. Could Gilroy not have come on for him? Up front why did Diack come on before McComb. We were ging backwards in the scrum ad we take off Williams (yes) but bring on Diack!? Would it not have been better to bring on McComb and move Henderson to 6?

No all in all a poor display.No spark, a very flat performance. Complacency? Tiredness? One of those games? Who knows, a mixture of all three probably. But now we'll see if we're world beaters or not?!

[scrum5]

Main problem I have is that Mark didn't freshen things up earlier when it was obvious we were FUBAR.
Still, we've won the head to head vs Saints if it comes down to it; Saints now have something to play for against Castres, and we at least got The LBP. I always seen this pool as 3 sides losing two matches each... thought ours would be away tbh.

We were poor in all aspects, and got beat by one point by a limited top 3 AP side. We butchered at least 3 clear try scoring opportunities, and could've won by 10 points. Its fine line between clever and stupid... basically, will we see all 15 play as poorly again?
Covered quite comprehensively here, but I come back to the same point(s) of real concern;

Our front row management is a mess imo.
JA is being shagged senseless- Saints had basically two full front rows to play and freshen up- and trusted to play in an HEC tie- even with Hartley missing. We have a good young hooker with the best darts in the club playing for the Ravens, and Nigel Brady not used. We have one serially injured TH and another again playing and scoring for the Ravens. We have a Loosehead covering at TH on an HEC match with 1(?) Ulster appearance to cover JA, who's now basically doing an 80min shift against two Loosies, week in week out. Next week HEALEY ffs... this is madness (not Le Grand Pantalon I may add...)
Court has went well, but Black should've been on earlier to freshen up.
I'll also confront the Elephant in the room- Rory's darts have the unerring ability to implode under pressure... the one real flaw in his game, and one that could yet jeopardise his Lions jersey. Herring from what I've seen, is the more accomplished thrower, although not yet tested under a real HEC pressure cooker. He's also a tight scrummager.

Back Five: I felt the move of Henderson to second row was wrong, and haven't changed my mind. He's a couple of years off that level. Physically, compare him to Etzebeth who's the same vintage, but much much more developed. Hendo is more effective at 6, and should stay there. Williams is not a full 70-80min player. McComb should've started for the ballast to match Saints. I said as such in previous posts, although hindsights a wonderful thing.

9, 10, 12; Felt this was changed too late by MA. Neither PJ nor PW were at full tilt last night- it happens, although both were defensively on the money as usual. (Note if PW had a perforated eardrum, should he have started? It affects balance badly- had them myself) But again felt we churned the bench too late.
Both Marshalls are champing at the bit, and made a difference, even if giving Saints something different when plan A didn't work. Love him or loathe him, Smallp does have the capacity to do something different, and again last night took a risk that nearly paid off- one criticism of RP was that he was predictable- efficient but predictable- never once felt he was going to break himself.

Hey, one of those nights- mixed feelings losing to a team I despise, rather than Ladyboi's or Turnips, first. Hey ho.

I think the next 3 weeks are going to be pretty tight imo... due to injuries and the fact that our front liners ain't going to get a break now. Wouldn't be surprised to see us go down in both Derbies. Or hopefully, the monkey gone, we play with more expression, and a bit of freedom.

LS, DF, etc can't come back quick enough; hope that JM is a quick healer, and pray to whatever God or Darwin that TB and SF play again before March. Talking to a guy from UR last night, he reckoned serious ligament damage
We're down to the bare bones in the areas that win matches, and one injury or suspension away from catastrophe (JA).
Agree as well that with so many experienced players, including an Irish captain, we seem to lack REAL leadership when it counts.
With all of the emotion of the season so far (lets not forget the most important and significant event this season so far, way above any rugby match) maybe its not unexpected that many of our guys are running on empty mentally? Lets get a bit of perspective here, and no "they're pro rugby players, its their job.." type sh*te..

Final moan; level of expectation at Hill is now ridiculous- the amount of ignorant crap spouted by people who've never played the game meaningfully is getting embarrassing and painful. Was at Memorial end for my sins, and the rubbish regarding our pack getting mullered in the scrums, missed tackles etc.. made me mad. Cries of "take him off" if a tackle was missed, ball dropped etc.. was sickening and ridiculous. The price of success I suppose- least we didn't have a Fleg protest from some of our newer fans....

Nothing more to be said apart from we need a reliable back up for John Afoa and history tells us it's not Fitzy....unfortunately

Saints fans were excellent

[Nightsoil]

Don't know if anyone's looked at the espn stats, but they're rather interesting.

http://www.espnscrum.com/heineken-cup-2 ... 67650.html

If we look here, we look the better team in open play - better defenders, better runners.

However, the set piece malfunctioned, and most importantly, we were trying to play the game in our half without the ball - very poor possession and territory stats, particularly the latter.

The scrum - they're a good scrum, we lost a couple late when we ran out of the front row resources to match them.

The lineout - one throw in the right spot that was in the right spot but Wilson arrived a second too late, one well read by the oppo... the lineout's been creaking in general recently for all our throwers, something's wrong and I don't think it's exactly coincidence that Muller's played about 60 minutes recently.

I'm still feeling rather glum, but I look at the stats and think back and think

a) That performance still came very close to winning

b) Our depth is good but there's limits. We've got two international tightheads, but that's not much good when one's permanently injured. Most teams don't look that happy with their third choice blindside and fourth choice lock, particularly as both look better suited for other positions at the moment. It's not that surprising the set-piece wobbles when you've got those issues. Don't think Northampton had any injured at all.

So be it. We're still in charge of our season and now we get to see what we're made of. Turn it around for Leinster - not much bigger, either as motivation or challenge.

[scrum5]

Whilst disappointing to lose last night there was no shame in losing to the better team on the day, we still top the group with our destiny in our own hands SUFTUM

[ColinM]

Main problem I have is that Mark didn't freshen things up earlier when it was obvious we were FUBAR.
Still, we've won the head to head vs Saints if it comes down to it; Saints now have something to play for against Castres, and we at least got The LBP. I always seen this pool as 3 sides losing two matches each... thought ours would be away tbh.

We were poor in all aspects, and got beat by one point by a limited top 3 AP side. We butchered at least 3 clear try scoring opportunities, and could've won by 10 points. Its fine line between clever and stupid... basically, will we see all 15 play as poorly again?
Covered quite comprehensively here, but I come back to the same point(s) of real concern;

Our front row management is a mess imo.
JA is being shagged senseless- Saints had basically two full front rows to play and freshen up- and trusted to play in an HEC tie- even with Hartley missing. We have a good young hooker with the best darts in the club playing for the Ravens, and Nigel Brady not used. We have one serially injured TH and another again playing and scoring for the Ravens. We have a Loosehead covering at TH on an HEC match with 1(?) Ulster appearance to cover JA, who's now basically doing an 80min shift against two Loosies, week in week out. Next week HEALEY ffs... this is madness (not Le Grand Pantalon I may add...)
Court has went well, but Black should've been on earlier to freshen up.
I'll also confront the Elephant in the room- Rory's darts have the unerring ability to implode under pressure... the one real flaw in his game, and one that could yet jeopardise his Lions jersey. Herring from what I've seen, is the more accomplished thrower, although not yet tested under a real HEC pressure cooker. He's also a tight scrummager.

Back Five: I felt the move of Henderson to second row was wrong, and haven't changed my mind. He's a couple of years off that level. Physically, compare him to Etzebeth who's the same vintage, but much much more developed. Hendo is more effective at 6, and should stay there. Williams is not a full 70-80min player. McComb should've started for the ballast to match Saints. I said as such in previous posts, although hindsights a wonderful thing.

9, 10, 12; Felt this was changed too late by MA. Neither PJ nor PW were at full tilt last night- it happens, although both were defensively on the money as usual. (Note if PW had a perforated eardrum, should he have started? It affects balance badly- had them myself) But again felt we churned the bench too late.
Both Marshalls are champing at the bit, and made a difference, even if giving Saints something different when plan A didn't work. Love him or loathe him, Smallp does have the capacity to do something different, and again last night took a risk that nearly paid off- one criticism of RP was that he was predictable- efficient but predictable- never once felt he was going to break himself.

Hey, one of those nights- mixed feelings losing to a team I despise, rather than Ladyboi's or Turnips, first. Hey ho.

I think the next 3 weeks are going to be pretty tight imo... due to injuries and the fact that our front liners ain't going to get a break now. Wouldn't be surprised to see us go down in both Derbies. Or hopefully, the monkey gone, we play with more expression, and a bit of freedom.

LS, DF, etc can't come back quick enough; hope that JM is a quick healer, and pray to whatever God or Darwin that TB and SF play again before March. Talking to a guy from UR last night, he reckoned serious ligament damage
We're down to the bare bones in the areas that win matches, and one injury or suspension away from catastrophe (JA).
Agree as well that with so many experienced players, including an Irish captain, we seem to lack REAL leadership when it counts.
With all of the emotion of the season so far (lets not forget the most important and significant event this season so far, way above any rugby match) maybe its not unexpected that many of our guys are running on empty mentally? Lets get a bit of perspective here, and no "they're pro rugby players, its their job.." type sh*te..

Final moan; level of expectation at Hill is now ridiculous- the amount of ignorant crap spouted by people who've never played the game meaningfully is getting embarrassing and painful. Was at Memorial end for my sins, and the rubbish regarding our pack getting mullered in the scrums, missed tackles etc.. made me mad. Cries of "take him off" if a tackle was missed, ball dropped etc.. was sickening and ridiculous. The price of success I suppose- least we didn't have a Fleg protest from some of our newer fans....

Very good post CI man, many nails hit squarely on the noggin.

For a man who makes much ado about squad building and keeping things fresh, MA's use of the bench on Saturday smacked of last seasons 'keep the best XV on the pitch' tactics. I'd have liked to have seen him call Best ashore after 55-60 mins, Court, Wallace and Jackson soon after. Shame that PJ picked up a knock while on the ptich for a bit too long. Ironically, I had said to one of our crew that I'd have changed Bowe for Gilroy as opposed to Trimble; shame he picked up the injury after that too.

[Snipe Watson]

I disagree with this. We always looked the more dangerous team. And the team that started should have been allowed to try to work it out. All the parts were there except we couldn't keep the ball and finish a move 5 line breaks on another day would have yielded 4 tried, but nothing clicked, everything was rushed. 9/10 times beagle's break would have produced a score, but it was just one of those nights. Dragging players off would only have smacked of panic.

[ColinM]

Valid points Snipe, but from where I was watching, wee Jacko was starting to run out of ideas, and verging on making an unenforced error worse than his couple of poor kicks from hand. Why not mix it up by bringing on a running threat at SH and moving the Pienaar threat out one. IMO that says more about wanting to grab the game by the scruff than panic.

Equally we could see their fresh new front row coming a mile off, Besty's darts were imperfect; why not say - we can improve on this.

Gilroy and Marshall had good cameos last week, why not say to the opposisition - we're going to mix it up in the backs now because we are going to win?

Different ways of looking at the same thing. If we made the changes and lost people would say panic, if we did so and won Maak would be a genius. The only fact is that we left it late and came second, with the chance to win being created by p due to an unfortunate injury and a missed potshot from wide out by a Pienaar who had to wait about 8 mins in the cold before getting the chance to kick.

[Snipe Watson]

Why not mix it up by bringing on a running threat at SH and moving the Pienaar threat out one.

Yes I'll have to agree there. beagle could have been on 10/15 minutes sooner, posing a totally different puzzle to solve at halfback.