Positives & Negatives: Ulster V Dragons

[colwynvet]

+ves
Got 5 points from a match we would probably have lost in previous seasons or at the start of this one
Got 5 points without playing well, ie. We did exactly what everyone always praises Munster for doing!
Got 4 tries largely as a result of playing "heads up rugby" rather than going through pre-rehearsed phases, ie. We did exactly what everyone always praises Leinster for doing!
Game time for some of the fringe players who might be needed before the season is over (what exactly is McComish guilty of apart from not being Stevie Ferris? He did okay last night and will get better with experience).

-ves
Refereeing standards in the league.
Posters who are going to criticise me for wearing Ulster/Rose tinted goggles on. I can't help it, I'm an Ulster fan.

[CIMANFOREVER]

I don't know what the possession stats were but wouldn't be surprised if the Dragons had far more possession than Ulster.

OK, they couldn't do much with the ball when they had it, but at least they could hold on to the ball more more than a couple of phases, unlike Ulster... really not much in the way of continuity play or sustained pressure from the home side.

Was puzzled by Afoa's decision to go for a penalty when Ulster were 8 points ahead. An 8 point lead or an 11 point lead still needs 2 scores to overhaul, and Ulster needed all the BPs we can get to improve the table position.

I don't know if I am reading too much into this, but 3/4 Ulster tries had either Falloon or Birch being a link man. Does the inter passing leading to the 2nd try, or exploiting opposition mistakes (3rd and 4th tries) work better with a traditional open side than the 6s/8s back row that seems to be favoured by BMcL?

I thought Afoa's decision was sensible enough. Down to 14 men, 5 mins to go, 8 points ahead and Dragons pressing; win was most important at that stage, so fair play. Not sure Pienaar was too happy, but bear in mind it was the pack playing with 7 men....

Ref no.7, like the look of Birch- seamless when Birch came on for Faloon. Sad to say he won't get much game time at Ulster. But on the few times I've seen him, he's impressed, like others such as Farrell, and McKinney.

Performance was a curate's egg, but expected, given 6 of the pack, and 3 first choice backs were missing.
Dragons were game, but limited against a well organised Ulster defence. No wonder they're 3rd from bottom.They only looked dangerous when we were down to 14.
Whitten's yellow was fair enough, but agree that Faloon was on his feet and free to compete.

Would have liked to have seen Macklin get a half, as he needs game time, but that was never going to happen, given Afoa as capt. It games liek these where he will learn his trade. Paddy Mac went well when replacing Black.
McComish wasn't as bad as has been made out here, and was a crucial link in both second and fourth tries, and has improved since the last time I seen him.
Thought a reasonable turn out from the faithful as well...but how are we going to fill an 18,000 stadium week in week out, without it sounding like dried peas in a tin can?..
All in all, Ulster have a bit of depth now, with the NIQ's and squad players to negotiate most Rabo's during the 6N, and that's progress, as the cliche goes atm.
But someone save Nevin, please.........

[Eggs]

We won, and got the bonus point, sure we didn't play that well, but look at the number of first team starters on the pitch!?? I count 5, so to get the BP is job done!

The one negative however was our defense, too many missed tackles, against a better side they would have been tries, and I disagree with anyone who thinks our defensive alignments were good, several times I saw front rowers matched against wingers etc, and was pratyingthe dragons didnt notice (fortunately they didnt!)

That and the bizarre decision at the end to take the three, but obviously Afoa wanted the 'set piece play' from the kick off

Biggest plus for me was that we took our chances, I may be wrong but I think we were inside their 22 on no more than 5 occasions, and scored four tries- that's the sort of accuracy we need!

[rosetintedgoggles]

At the time I was confused bt the Afoa decision to have a pop at the 3 points. But after RP slotted it was so obvious what te thinking was......

The Dragoons could have got a bonus point by slotting a drop goal (Tovey)....remember the same fixture last season?

RP scores 3 pts, Dragoons demoralised (naff all left to play for) Ulster win kick off and Brian's your uncle!

[CIMANFOREVER]

At the time I was confused bt the Afoa decision to have a pop at the 3 points. But after RP slotted it was so obvious what te thinking was......

The Dragoons could have got a bonus point by slotting a drop goal (Tovey)....remember the same fixture last season?

RP scores 3 pts, Dragoons demoralised (naff all left to play for) Ulster win kick off and Brian's your uncle!

+1

[Setanta]

Think the criticism of Whitten is over the top; he tackled Brew out of the game.

[Eggs]

Think the criticism of Whitten is over the top; he tackled Brew out of the game.

+1

[Ardglass2]

Not a bad result considering none of the backrow showed up, humph was poor and Gilroy had a 'mare.

Stevenson was excellent and a key player in our victory. Does the donkey work that allows Tuohy to do the ball carrying

[colwynvet]

Gilroy's main problem is the number of passes he spills because he's already thinking ahead to what he's going to do with it before he actually catches it. This'll get better with experience.

I agree totally regarding Stevenson. He even managed a few carries himself last night.

Regarding the backrow, nobody expected those three to "pull up too many trees", any two plus either 3P or Ferris might have worked.

[bangorboy]

Ardglass, how in all that's holy can you say Gilroy had a mare?

His break for the piennar try was sublime ... In my humble opinion - and he made a cracking hand off for his own try as well n

[shamalicious]

Ardglass, how in all that's holy can you say Gilroy had a mare?

His break for the piennar try was sublime ... In my humble opinion - and he made a cracking hand off for his own try as well n

Made a nice step inside too.

[Ardglass2]

Ardglass, how in all that's holy can you say Gilroy had a mare?

His break for the piennar try was sublime ... In my humble opinion - and he made a cracking hand off for his own try as well n

To clarify he was very good offensively but poor defensively.
I think he missed Cave alongside talking to him.

[Aird]

Agree Last Knight. Watched France v Italy last Saturday and it really brought home how wheel our centres had coped with the Clermont backs.Could help thinking on Sunday afternoon that Wallace and Whitten could maybe have made a better job than the two Leinster Centres.
scrappy match last night but from my experience quite often a poor team can drag down the performance of a better side so more than happy with 5 pts and a step up the league to much closer to a Playoff place.
Thought Terblanche's try was the icing on the cake. Like others my initial reaction to to Afoa's decision to go for the posts was negative but a little pondering of the score and the time left I came round to the view that gauranteeing the 4 pts was essential and then Stefan made the night for the Ulster supporters and I suspect himself too. From his comments on Tuesday night he seems to have had no regrets in coming out of "retirement". Another clas sign for D H.

[BaggyTrousers]

Poor performance but I find the complaints a little odd; have you watched Leinster or Munster around international breaks in recent seasons? Although Leinster have improved in this area significantly in the last season or two, before that, neither ever looked particularly good during international breaks, etc. What was noticeable about their performances was not the nature of the performance but the result. That is what Ulster achieved this evening; 5 points from the weak performance of a seriously disrupted team. Maybe I'm a bit of an optimist but that seems like something worth celebrating, not something worth complaining about...

Positives - as above.
One negative I didn't understand was playing Spence - a 13 at 12 and Whitten - a 12 at 13. Whitten was poor to awful.

Think the call was fairly sensible; Wallace was away at Ireland training and was released for this game. Whitten was initially named at 13; as such, I presume that the week's training was based around Whitten in the 13 channel to play with Wallace. Presume Spence took the 'Wallace' role for the parts of training Wallace missed whilst away with Ireland. As such, when Wallace was called away at short notice, it probably made more sense to go with the training ground pairing, rather than the more 'natural' positions of each player because they would have been used to those attacking and defensive calls.

Excellent summary Neil, what I can tell you is that for all the comments of how much we should have beaten them by in the lead up to the game I had zero support for my assertion that it was 5 points waiting to be grabbed and that Dragons are currently even more appalling than they had been earlier in the season due to injury & Welsh calls on the few quality players they have.

I raised the same point as Jack about Whitten & Spence but was correctly chastised on the exact lines you mentioned.

Not a great performance to remember but certainly the 2nd try was magnificent, top marks to Willie Faloon for 2 excellent passes, the 2nd off his knees, McComish did well as did D'Arcy in smuggling the ball to the Saint. Indeed the tries all had nice bits to purr over and I'm pretty sure a few months ago the confidence in handling would have blown a couple of them.

What is certainly great is the 6th TBP in eight games, the exceptions being the kids jamboree in the RDS & the LBP at Clermont.

Big game next week in Caaaaaaaaaaaaadiff, a win TBP or not will go along way to putting us in contention for the top 4. It will be interesting who we will have available from 6Ns duty, hopefully Tom Court, Chris Henry, Paddy Wallace with Johann & Pedrie to return.

[scrum5]

Johann out for 3 to 4 weeks, over all a satisfying result, 5 points collected and a fair few good performances from the men in white...... SUFTUM