Are we headed for dark times??

[Deraless]

Whatever the calvary that arrives post RWC it won't be in the form of McCaw or Read but I suppose that still leaves Kaino although given UR's record even that will be Dave Kaino the back-up OH for North Harbour

...just sayin' like

[BuckRogers]

Unless ofa atu means 'I'll be seein' ye and I didn't sign a new deal recently' we ain't getting Kaino.

[Bayern]

There are of course questions about Leinster stock-piling talent. They've backrowers coming out of their ears and have Ireland's three best TH's. I'll begrudgingly remain happy with Herbst but Munster are losing BJ and Archer is crap. Why did Nuciforca not usher one of Moore or Furlong to Munster where they'd start every match they were fit for? Leinster have 8 good backrowers. Even ignoring their top 6 (Ruddock, Murphy, Heaslip, O'Brien, Conan and Ryan) there are others there better than CRoss/Reidy and almost certainly harder than Diack.

Before Bayern comes defending Leinsters right to stockpile we had had a serious pool of centres. Payne, Marshall, Cave and Olding (unsure of this one) are all capped centres and McCloskey is a great prospect. Guys like Whitten and Farrell left long before Nuciforca when there was a bottleneck of players behind BOD/Dorse but the picture isn't so rosey any longer. We should only be allowed 4 Irish capped centres IMO.

There are big issues facing Irish rugby in general. The Academy's are being left behind by Leinster and I don't know about the others but ours is a farce.

Leinster are supposedly stockpiling talent, but yet they finished 3rd out of the 4 provinces last season. Granted MOC was to blame for most of that but we aren't overflowing with elite talent.

Even still there is a lot of talent in the backrow at Leinster, 1 of the players you listed is likely on the move after this season, Dominic Ryan, can't be certain he'd be willing to move to Ulster but it may be worth investigating. By the way every province already has a leinster underage backrow in it's academy.

On the topic of tighthead, Mike Ross is about to retire, Martin Moore missed most of last season with injury and Furlong only started playing regularly last season. Both Ulster and Munster have a leinster underage tighthead in their academy. And Nathan White appears to be rated higher than Furlong, for now at least. If in the theoretical future Moore/Furlong are the starting and backup tightheads for Ireland, they will be struggling.

On the topic of Leinster being miles ahead of every other province is debatable, Munster won both u19 and u20 interpro's this september. And the u18 interpro's were pretty close.

Ireland u20 this year probably won't be leinster dominated, but it also probably won't have a strong Ulster presence either.

Ulster's biggest problem is developing the natural talent within the province, no ulster bred backrow developed in at least half a decade is not good enough. They've been supplementing this problem using exiles(Dow, Joyce, Taggart, Arnold, Byrne, McPhillips) and leinster underage players(O'Connor, Trenier, Shanahan, Timoney).

Somewhere in the development process Ulster are struggling to mold/develop props and backrows especially.

[BaggyTrousers]

There are of course questions about Leinster stock-piling talent. They've backrowers coming out of their ears and have Ireland's three best TH's. I'll begrudgingly remain happy with Herbst but Munster are losing BJ and Archer is crap. Why did Nuciforca not usher one of Moore or Furlong to Munster where they'd start every match they were fit for? Leinster have 8 good backrowers. Even ignoring their top 6 (Ruddock, Murphy, Heaslip, O'Brien, Conan and Ryan) there are others there better than CRoss/Reidy and almost certainly harder than Diack.

Before Bayern comes defending Leinsters right to stockpile we had had a serious pool of centres. Payne, Marshall, Cave and Olding (unsure of this one) are all capped centres and McCloskey is a great prospect. Guys like Whitten and Farrell left long before Nuciforca when there was a bottleneck of players behind BOD/Dorse but the picture isn't so rosey any longer. We should only be allowed 4 Irish capped centres IMO.

There are big issues facing Irish rugby in general. The Academy's are being left behind by Leinster and I don't know about the others but ours is a farce.

Leinster are supposedly stockpiling talent, but yet they finished 3rd out of the 4 provinces last season. Granted MOC was to blame for most of that but we aren't overflowing with elite talent.

Even still there is a lot of talent in the backrow at Leinster, 1 of the players you listed is likely on the move after this season, Dominic Ryan, can't be certain he'd be willing to move to Ulster but it may be worth investigating. By the way every province already has a leinster underage backrow in it's academy.

On the topic of tighthead, Mike Ross is about to retire, Martin Moore missed most of last season with injury and Furlong only started playing regularly last season. Both Ulster and Munster have a leinster underage tighthead in their academy. And Nathan White appears to be rated higher than Furlong, for now at least. If in the theoretical future Moore/Furlong are the starting and backup tightheads for Ireland, they will be struggling.

On the topic of Leinster being miles ahead of every other province is debatable, Munster won both u19 and u20 interpro's this september. And the u18 interpro's were pretty close.

Ireland u20 this year probably won't be leinster dominated, but it also probably won't have a strong Ulster presence either.

Ulster's biggest problem is developing the natural talent within the province, no ulster bred backrow developed in at least half a decade is not good enough. They've been supplementing this problem using exiles(Dow, Joyce, Taggart, Arnold, Byrne, McPhillips) and leinster underage players(O'Connor, Trenier, Shanahan, Timoney).

Somewhere in the development process Ulster are struggling to mold/develop props and backrows especially.

Bejaysus I see all this is coming between you and sleep too. That actually paints a forlorn picture for most of us, hence it is matching our current reality and feeling of, some say, dark times, I say darker times, for I already feel that we've missed a catchable boat over the last few seasons and the cobwebs grow in the prestigious but echoingly empty trophy cabinet.

With no player production line to speak of, the most stringent bar in any country on buying in talent and very possibly the bubble of expectation burst or bursting, it looks ........ dark. Old hands grumbling about loss of values, cretins shouting into microphones an irritation, crowds still come, but for how long will that hold if the expectation becomes; duffed up early in Europe, maybe or maybe not top four in the league?

Sounds bleak, thank Christ I've only a season and a bit to go. Unless I die first of course. Fückïng depressing.

[BaggyTrousers]

Oh yeah, it is a quality rant Buck but having lain awake for the last 4 hours of ..... Darkness.... I of course share your frustration but in reality, reality is what Nightsoil posted .

I believe we have been sold a dream, one not apparently too far from achievable on the face of it, but a dream none the less. Certainly Fit and the good Dr Humphreys made good early moves, spent a few quid to strengthen us on the field and though we've regressed on the NIQ front in the last buying round, it appears we may be blowing the cobwebs off the wallet again.

We've been incredibly fortunate to be gifted excellent facilities but to me that is mainly window dressing barring the obvious, the increased capacity and the 50% minimum average crowd increase. Quite how that compares with revenue and expenditure I have no idea, but I assume the new facility is hugely more expensive to maintain.

But here, that's all waffle, here's the thing. In the absence of any discernible player stream being produced, how can we ever expect better than the current frustration. It's unrealistic to imagine a flow of success without a flow of players. Look at our pack, in the name a Jaysus we have Rory, Chad and Hendy who are home produced, beyond that Oor Wullie and old Roger, the rest are blowins, Big Licence? Who knows, John Andrew, same but there are damn few about.

Nah, it is hugely frustrating, but I think too many of us have bought the dream, Nightsoil is pretty much on the mark, we're actually about as good as we "deserve" to be given our inability to do anything but buy in sufficient talent to keep us interested.

Reality is a ballix... but it's still reality. Could the IRFU improve the provinces lot by managing where guys play? Probably so, but what a can of worms that would open, it would be a brave but hazardous move with no guarantee it would produce more answers than questions.

Yip reality sucks shyte through a tramps holie sock, that's why folk ignore it.

[Kofi Annan]

Could the IRFU improve the provinces lot by managing where guys play? Probably so, but what a can of worms that would open, it would be a brave but hazardous move with no guarantee it would produce more answers than questions.

That's next on the agenda for the Aussies who run Irish Rugby

[bazzaj]

For me its the quality of NIQ.
As we have seen in the world cup one star quality player does make all the difference as with Pocock for Australia.
Him at 8 and OZ became a completely different side.

In one year we had Afoa Muller and RP who were up there with the best and we were a match for anyone.
Now its at best slightly above average Joes and RP even is starting to look past his best.
A world class back rower and front rower signed and we aren't having this thread.

[Big Smoke Culchie]

Could the IRFU improve the provinces lot by managing where guys play? Probably so, but what a can of worms that would open, it would be a brave but hazardous move with no guarantee it would produce more answers than questions.

That's next on the agenda for the Aussies who run Irish Rugby

Please god, tell me that's not serious.

[Cockatrice]

I said before I was speaking to the father of a young lad coming through the schools here and getting into the Academy he was hopeful that his son could make it one day. Then his son was dumped because he didn't hit the matrix set down by UR for muscle build/shape/physic whatever you want to call it. From what I understand a skilful player with good handling skills/ball control and able to offload now dumped in the rugby wasteland at a tender age and deemed useless to Ulster. The lad is likely to give up and concentrate on his academic side and good luck to him for I suspect that if not him one or two others like him may be to Ulster's loss. It appears that size is everything and ball skills nothing.

Where to start with this..

What position does he play?
Is he a good athlete?
What size is he?

Ulster haven't shown any reluctance in promoting smaller players - Olding and Jackson being obvious small players for Ulster.

So without knowing more, I doubt Ulster are purposely ignoring talented rugby players because they lack size.

Bayern… only part of what I said. I made mention to the size matrix that UR seem to use I have no idea of the detail except that they use it. Is he a good athlete YES as for size it doesn't matter he didn't tick all the right size boxes for his position so was dumped.

As for Olding I see a player that has had to bulk up considerably in a short space of time presumably just to be able to play the modern game and tick those same boxes but at the loss of what? well for now the loss of a player who has had two serious leg injuries and barely been able to get any run of games in the past couple of years.

[BaggyTrousers]

For me its the quality of NIQ.
As we have seen in the world cup one star quality player does make all the difference as with Pocock for Australia. Him at 8 and OZ became a completely different side.

In one year we had Afoa Muller and RP who were up there with the best and we were a match for anyone.
Now its at best slightly above average Joes and RP even is starting to look past his best.
A world class back rower and front rower signed and we aren't having this thread.

Jizzer I'm not normally outraged by your posts, I often agree, sometimes I am amused a tad but this one is horseshite.

You are entirely ignoring the change in discipline that Cheika has imposed on an unruly and fractured squad who he told to shape up or feck off - a lesson to Ulster by the way - the rule change he insisted on as a condition of taking the job, to allow him to bring in the influential Giteau and energetic Mitchell, you take no cognisance of what the wonderful Mario Ledesma has achieved as forwards and particularly scrum coach.

Just moving Pocock to 8 eh? FFS Jizzbeg give me a feckin' break.

I should add, that apart I agree on the quality of NIQ, the last lot were just honest players without the real quality all the provinces, not just Ulster need.

[bazzaj]

Are Oz a different side without him Baggy?
Its that simple.

[Cornerfleg]

I can do no better than the aul boy beside me on Friday ... after watching a jaw droppingly pathetic display of skill, nous, game plan and tactics ... he turned to me ... I knew not this sage from Adam ... and with a cultured culchie voice proceeded to say in a restrained voice ..... "Jeeeeez boy, we're shyte ...."

That is going to be hard to op.

[Snipe Watson]

Unless ofa atu means 'I'll be seein' ye and I didn't sign a new deal recently' we ain't getting Kaino.

Kaino is over 30 so the IRFU will not sanction anything longer than a one year contract.

[BuckRogers]

Let's not become side tracked over Aus and Pocock chaps. This an opportunity to have a rant about Ulster and so far Buck is out in front by a country mile.

If you're going to do it you might as well do it right.

[Snipe Watson]

Let's not become side tracked over Aus and Pocock chaps. This an opportunity to have a rant about Ulster and so far Buck is out in front by a country mile.

If you're going to do it you might as well do it right.

If the various hints and implied references to divisions and infighting within the camp are even close to being true, we have a set of problems that are much bigger than a misfiring team which is just a symptom of a bigger problem. Admittedly Les has only just stepped into post, although it would be foolish to think he hasn't had some regular involvement with the squad albeit at a distance. So maybe he can work some magic and bring the whole thing together.
If we are as broken as this pessimistic picture suggests, it's going to be a long winter.