Positives & Negatives: Ulster V Aironi

[againstthehead]

Positives
- a bonus point
- a bonus point
- a bonus point

- most of us were a bit reluctant to talk bonus points prior to the game but realistically a BP was required from this home game. Right from the off, we looked to spread the ball and attack in the wide channels. At times it looked a tad high risk but in fairness, we carved them up on multiple occasions and with a bit more luck or better support play we could have been out of sight with 20 mins to go. Not a polished performance but generally we looked confident and ready to have a go.
- scrum was very impressive. 2 monster scrums - the second of which gave us the BP. And without Botha - very impressive indeed.
- lineout pretty decent overall
- pienaar lively but lacked support runners at times. Another few games and the rest of the squad may be on his level.
- diack - turning into a super player. Good hands, quick, carries - well worth his MOTM.
- mini humph - made a number of mistakes but on the whole he gave us an extra dimension. His try was a great piece of oppertunism and he buzzed with confidence after it.
- smith - much more solid at the back and ran some lovely lines. Seemed to bounce of tacklers quite well too.

Negatives
- should have had at least 2 tries in the 1st 40. Not scoring against 14 men was criminal.
- time and time again we made the half break but either lacked the support or failed to recycle the ball to go again. Need a touch more composure on the final third.
- goal kicking - horrific -apart from mini humph
- injuries to PW and Cave: need both of those guys for next week!!!

Overall, a decent performance but a GREAT bonus point. Sets us up very well for our trip to France - particuarly if we have ferris and botha back in contention. That said, we've yet to be really tested. Biarritz is the litmus test - after next Sunday we'll have a better idea of where we are in relation to the top sides in Europe.

[Big-al]

Agree with you about Biarritz being the litmus test, we'll have to be more clinical next week though. Hopefully have another week the backs will have gotten used to playing with iHumph and Pienaar.

I'd also give Ruan a bit more leeway with the kicking - his 1st time kicking in those conditions and didn't seem to have a notion which way the wind was blowing.

Major advantages though was Robbie Diack, in brilliant form and will be a huge, huge player for Ulster this season if continues with this form.

Ferris and Botha will be back next week, they are our 2 world class forwards and well add a lot more power to our forward play

[marginw23]

Big-al, you say, "they are our 2 world class forwards".
What about yer man, Johann Muller?
I've heard he's not bad, have you not been watching the games?

[cables]

Injury also to Smith - ice pack on front of right shoulder. Not really a problem in itself but the way he was carrying his right arm suggests there may be a problem.

[Big-al]

marginw23

Muller is a top class player but I don't think he's world class. Botha and Ferris are

People often get mixed up between the term international class and world class

[Tenyarder]

+ve

BP win
Pienaar put in another good game but generally lacked support outside (his goal kicking was poor)
Scrum looked awesome, OK average opposition but no BJ
Forwards generally, but Rory's darts are still not quite right.

-ve
A lot of knock ons and lost possession - anyone got the stats?
Unable to close out game, and once again an inability to convert 22 pressure into tries
Last 10 minutes when they took us to the cleaners
Chris White - a bit whistle happy, but he did make one good lineout steal, and even joined the ruck!
Ball boys seemed to be asleep
Crowd (according to BBC) was 7777, so not breaking out of 7500 - 8000 range

I have not mentioned iH as I think we have had enough hot air on this topic, suffice to say that he is not the answer to our 10 problem, but at least he did chase his rather aimless kick to steal the try.

[Big-al]

+ve

BP win
Pienaar put in another good game but generally lacked support outside (his goal kicking was poor)
Scrum looked awesome, OK average opposition but no BJ
Forwards generally, but Rory's darts are still not quite right.

-ve
A lot of knock ons and lost possession - anyone got the stats?
Unable to close out game, and once again an inability to convert 22 pressure into tries
Last 10 minutes when they took us to the cleaners
Chris White - a bit whistle happy, but he did make one good lineout steal, and even joined the ruck!
Ball boys seemed to be asleep
Crowd (according to BBC) was 7777, so not breaking out of 7500 - 8000 range

I have not mentioned iH as I think we have had enough hot air on this topic, suffice to say that he is not the answer to our 10 problem, but at least he did chase his rather aimless kick to steal the try.

Who is?

Also you say we where unable to close out the game even though we won 30-6

[bootlaced]

For those who were actually at the game and not listening to the radio like myself and a few others,can you say how Cave played,we also had 11 penalties in the first half it was hard to judge by listening on the radio,but it seemed that there was a lot of them that we might have rushed,we sounded like we had them in the scrum and the maul and maybe we should'nt have went so quickly with the tap and go.

[bangorboy]

Long time reader first time poster ( and also a very late comer to the rugby world so be gentle... )

+ves

No endless kicking game
Lots of work by the backs
Some cracking runs from Jamie
Cheeky try from iHumph
BP

-ves
Knock ons & fumbles
Some of the quick pens were taken so quickly that rest of team were not up to speed and advantage was lost
Wasted penalty kicks - averages no better than NOC I reckon

What gave me great heart was that although there were a lot of silly mistakes and fumbles - they mostly came about because we were passing and spreading the ball across the backs and got in some great runs.

RP and iH were getting the ball clear of rucks at great speed and I think it has taken the backs a little time to catch up with this ( very noticeable last week I thought ).

Overall a lot more signs that we are moving in the right direction than just about any match of the season - glad to see it too!!!

[Jackie Brown]

Another strange night,

Positives,
Scrum was immense
Rory Best was excellent, again, his Darts may have been slightly off at one point but overall he was everywhere
4 try bonus, would have felt like a loss if we hadn't got it
Thought Henry was everywhere, excellent game, probably enough to keep Falloon on the bench at most
Trimble and Danielli looking strong
Pienaar's passing, pure class, just invites runners. iHumph thrived off it.
The general attacking play, we were running lines and looking dangerous everytime we got the ball.
Diack, wow, he really is at another level this season, looking the player he always threatened to be.
The trys all came from unplanned moves.
Lack of aimless kicking


Negatives,
It was a victory, a bonus point victory, yet it somehow felt a bit... flat. We were all over them for the majority of the game, we should have HAMMERED them by 50+. They showed nothing in attack and will doubtless be a tough team to break down in Italy but really, if we had taken our chances, we would have been out of sight after 30mins.
We seemed rushed a nervous, needed to just relax and let it flow, forced it to much.
Our attacking plays didn't pay off, Trimbles try was from a scrum turnover?? iHumphs was cheeky and very opportunistic, I can't recall Danielli's, Pienaar was Aironi's ruck defense going awol. Our attacking plays themselves never paid off. We just didn't seem to click in the backs but I'm sure this will happen the more they play together.
Silly silly, Knock ons, forward passes, dropped balls, offloads to Italians. The error count must have been massive.
Pienaar's kicking from ground, I refuse to blame the ball.
Injuries to Wallace, Cave and Smith, hope none are too serious.

[TheWonDon]

Positives:
- Intent. From the very start we tried to run at them and get it wide, could have had a try from it.
- Diack. Superb tonight, as he has been so far this season. We need him at least as good as that next week against the immense Harinordoquy.
- Scrum. Couple of monster efforts, as said above, one of which got us a try.
- Smith. Haven't been his biggest fan but he impressed tonight.
- Pienaar. Goal kicking aside, scored one try, made another and looked super lively from the breakdown.

Negatives:
- I.Humph. For me it was a case of a child trying far too hard to impress his older mates. Seemed to dummy pass everytime he got the ball, more often than not would hand it inside when the wide pass was on. I seen them working on this in the warm up, and while it looks great, sometimes you just need to lob it out.
- Turnovers. I think we had 3 in their 22. That's not good enough.
- Handling. How many errors were there? I think we would have/should have been out of sight but for this.

All in all I'm pretty happy. Not great, but the bonus point which we all wanted, and pretty much need in this group.

Next week is a completely different game altogether though.

[Rooster]

I have not mentioned iH as I think we have had enough hot air on this topic, suffice to say that he is not the answer to our 10 problem, but at least he did chase his rather aimless kick to steal the try.

ihumph had a decent match for a guy that was basically on a preseason run.
The kick ahead was well placed to gain field position but bounced and probably was wind assisted and finished up over the try line, at least he had the wit to follow it up probably originally to stop a quick throw but then somehow managed to score a try.

[King Ding]

I.Humph. For me it was a case of a child trying far too hard to impress his older mates. Seemed to dummy pass everytime he got the ball, more often than not would hand it inside when the wide pass was on. I seen them working on this in the warm up, and while it looks great, sometimes you just need to lob it out.

Haha tell us another one, humph showed tonight that this should not have been his first start of the season, It was god to see this backline play with a proper 10 ans not a kicking robot. Yes he was trying hard and some stuff didn't come of but who cares, he only really tried things when we had the penalty advantage. Great to see him back and i had to laugh when he put those kicks over, couldn't make a bigger statement to the management and imo has to start next week.

the scrum was a real positive, driving them back more than once.
Henry was everywhere but very rarly made ground, regularly getting stopped dead on his track or ushed back, would still like to see faloon start but politics mean he wont.
Thought Peinaar played alright, but a lot of his passes were far too flat, regularly not going to hand, his place kicking was dreadful and we can't just overllok that because of is name, if humph or NOC kicked like that we would be outraged.

[David Craig]

One negative not mentioned yet................ the crowd.

Atmosphere was not the usual for a Heineken Cup match. Better atmosphere at some Magners league matches this season.

[FRB]

+ve:

- BP - without looking convincing and against a limited but very stubborn team
- return of iHumph - he looked undercooked (what would you expect after his Ulster 'exile'? any wonder he looked to be trying too hard) but he has pace and and ambition to run the ball. He deserved his try.
- Johann Muller - I watched him closely for a period in the 2nd half and his work rate was spectacular. 5 tackles around the fringes in the space of a couple of minutes at one stage. Superb. One of his takes form a kick off in thefirst half was pure class as well. Again, superb.

-ve:

- A lack of composure prevailed throughout our performance. The missed kicks didn't help as Ulster were unable to build a lead but it seemed that the scoring of an early try put them under pressure. Almost as if the mindset was "OK. We scored now we must get this Bonus point." They seemed to panic and make some basic handling errors and some dire decisions. Hopefully, achieving the BP win will give them confidence to back themselves and in turn be patient.
- Place kicking
- Te butchering of an overlap by Paddy shortly after iHumph scored. It would have been the killer blow much earlier. Generally, the backs need to learn to run straighter - other chances and overlaps were lown because Arioni herded the Ulstermen towards the touchline. Run straight FFS!!!!!
- the youngster on the prom who was hit square in the face by a ball thrown by a spectator who was trying to return the ball to the pitch following a kick to touch. It looked bloody sore - hope the bairn is OK.