Ulster v Toulouse Sat Apr 16 8pm KO BT Sport 2

[StandUp]

Can anyone enlighten me as to why we have an NIQ lock (who is probably on a very decent salary) who doesn’t even make it in to the match day 23?
He wasn’t listed on the injury notice from UR so wtf?
Why don’t UR get rid of this anchor?

[UlsterNo9]

Can anyone enlighten me as to why we have an NIQ lock (who is probably on a very decent salary) who doesn’t even make it in to the match day 23?
He wasn’t listed on the injury notice from UR so wtf?
Why don’t UR get rid of this anchor?

A front row NIQ of the Afoa/Kempson/Botha calibre and a Muller/Harrison 2nd row get you over the line most likely. Are the funds there?

Rob Herring playing almost 160 minutes shouldn't be happening.

[StandUp]

Can anyone enlighten me as to why we have an NIQ lock (who is probably on a very decent salary) who doesn’t even make it in to the match day 23?
He wasn’t listed on the injury notice from UR so wtf?
Why don’t UR get rid of this anchor?

A front row NIQ of the Afoa/Kempson/Botha calibre and a Muller/Harrison 2nd row get you over the line most likely. Are the funds there?


Rob Herring playing almost 160 minutes shouldn't be happening.

Agreed 9.
The funds were there to sign Kitshoff, which must have been a huge bundle. With that sort of dough, hopefully Bryn can pull another rabbit out of his sack for next season.
I worry what kind of message it sends to the rest of the squad when an NIQ - who should be one of the first names on the sheet for a match like this - can be absent.
Does personal performance not matter anymore? Can I take it easy in training coz if Carter is still getting paid, so will I.

[jean valjean]

Carter is here for another season. With the world Cup in 2023 can we try and secure someone to come in after that? Duane will likely be gone then also so we will be in the market for 2-3 top class NIQs.

[UlsterNo9]

The two legs perfectly summarised by McFarland, no complaints.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/61131012

Ulster: Tom O'Toole red card not the decisive moment in defeat, says Dan McFarland

Dan McFarland says Ulster's one-point aggregate defeat by Toulouse did not come down solely to Tom O'Toole's red card, but a number of key moments.

Prop O'Toole was dismissed with 15 minutes remaining in the second leg with Ulster leading the tie by three.

Antoine Dupont's converted try with five minutes left sent the defending champions into the last eight.

"Ultimately the game is decided because we did a couple of critical things that were wrong," McFarland said.

"Teams do that obviously, but if you want to win at this level against sides of the quality of Toulouse you can't afford to make those mistakes.

"It happens but just on the day we didn't quite get right."

Ulster brought a 26-20 advantage into their home leg, having secured a memorable win out in Toulouse after the French champions had been reduced to 14 men in the 10th minute.

However, that lead was wiped out before the half-hour mark in Belfast as the visitors scored two tries in quick succession - the first from Thomas Ramos after Romain Ntamack seared through Ulster's defence before the fly-half ran the length of the field for an intercept score five minutes later.

"I look at their two tries, like we gifted them two tries. A poor piece of defence let them through on the inside shoulder and an intercept pass in the space of five minutes," reflected McFarland.

"There was another critical call on James Hume off his feet at a breakdown and that was to me just not a penalty at all. That was another critical moment.

"When you watch their half-backs work and the quality of their play. Dupont is kicking the ball from literally under his own posts to 45 metres from his own line.

"We were piling pressure on them there and he does it regularly. It's just next level and that's what you can expect from the best player in the world."

After O'Toole's was shown red for a high hit on Anthony Jelonch, Ulster extended their lead through a John Cooney penalty before Toulouse worked their way up the field and patiently waited for space to open that would eventually allow Dupont in for the decisive score - the visitors winning the match 30-23 and the tie 50-49 on aggregare.

"Their try at the end obviously came off the back of having an extra man and being so potent, being able to stretch the field like they do," accepted McFarland.

"You could pick out any moment from the games. We gave a try away because we gave up an inside shoulder in defence. If we don't do that, that's not a try.

"Last week if the tackle area had been a little bit clearer, [referee] Wayne Barnes maybe would have given us the jackal penalty that would have meant we were 13 points up going into this leg.

"There are instances across the board. Equally there was probably a forward pass in the lead-up to one of our tries. There are plenty of things in the last two weeks that if we had done better we would have won but in the end it is what it is.

"We could have won it if we had been a little bit sharper in a couple of areas I'd expect us to be sharper in.

"We didn't quite get it right, but the margins are so small against a team like Toulouse, you're living on the edge the whole time and if you get anything wrong they're going to punish you."

[justinr73]

Elstadt came across to the East Terrace after the game and said that he’d love to go out for a few beers in Belfast but couldn’t because they were flying home.

Some young pup handed him a pint of stout and, needless to say, the parched flanker downed it in one, much to the horror of the wee boy who said “I only meant you to take a sip, like”.

[WestDr]

Disappointed ? Yes. Downhearted ? No. Thought Dan McF sums it up well. I would concur that it was the intercept try that made the hill an almost insurmoutable one. And that was because we needed to be 2 scores (14+ points) ahead of Toulouse to withstand their last 10 minutes, when almost any team will concede something.

Did we have any luck ? Lots - on any other day there could have been four red cards. Although to be honest, I would have said Herring should have gone rather than O'Toole, since it seemed to me that the Toulouse player was almost on his knees coming into that sitation with O'Toole. However, that's as may be. Did anyone have a stinker ? No. Could not fault the effort, committment and work-rate of all the players who got on the pitch.

Where could we have done with a little more luck ? The moments in the second half when the pressure got to Toulouse, not least their nightmare 30 seconds when they threw two or three really loose passes and ended up under their own posts....

Where we improved from last week: (a) line-outs much better - no doubt due to better officiating of them (just quite what does the Assistant Ref do ?) and (b) scrums. In the latter, we held our own, helped perhaps by a team who want to use them as designed - to get the backs in the game - not as a means to win penalties. Also interesting to see how much more Lowry ran the ball back at them from full-back compared to last week.

It was interesting to note also where Toulouse had learned from last week - much faster line speed, meaning that Baloucoune got nothing at all. Not one run. However he will have done those who believe his defensive work isn't up to it no harm at all. Other small things - worth watching how Toulouse moved the two-player screen around their catcher to make Baloucoune (a) run further to get round them and (b) thus have a much poorer view of what the catcher was doing, where he was in the air and where he was going to land. Did very well, with the milli-second he had, to avoid a much worse outcome.

Ulster create the 'caterpillar' for Cooney's box kicks, but only Marty Moore seems to loiter purposely along side the ruck to make their 'closers-down' run further/work harder/not bother. Cooney had two charged down, and many of the others in that 15 minute period when he did lots were, I would contend, made under sufficient pressure as to not be where he wanted them to go.

Notwithstanding the entirely valid points DHarper makes about the wider Irish provincial perspective - which I think will, in the end, come back to bite the IRFU very badly, where would I be concerned about our performance on the day ? Forget the top two inches stuff - there was only one penalty kick we turned down to go for the corner. From where I was sitting, two things stuck out:

(1) In taking the points on offer (which was the right decision) we turned down the chance to see how good our maul was close into the line in getting 7. Looking at the general success of the maul elsewhere, then it didn't seem all that effective in gaining ground, more like an opportunity to slow our own ball down. Against the top teams in knock-out rugby, maul defence seems to have improved no end, and if we don't get across the line from the initial line-out maul, we don't have the nous, strength or skill-set to get over the line from 5 metres in the way Munster and Leinster do. If there's one area where we miss Marcel, it's there. But we do need more than one big ball-carrier..... Marty Moore does a great job here, but we do need more.... tbh, didn't see Kitshoff as outstanding in this area but maybe not watched him enough.

(2) How rarely we consistently got over the gain line and how rarely we got behind them from our own efforts. We did it twice, and scored two tries. Even from the other side of the pitch, some collection and finish by McIlroy. On both occasions, we had a shed load more space for our backs to use, and quicker ball.

As as been noted elsewhere in the 'kicker never coming forward' comment, Toulouse were confident of (a) defending from around their 22m line and (b) once we were in that area, attack our ball to either turn it over or at least slow it down there. For example from the 47th to 53rd minute we bashed away between the 10m and 22m line, finally winning a penalty which we converted. Not a major return from what was a colossal effort to retain the ball.

It's undoubtedly much harder to get through 15 players crammed into a 22m x 70m sized area than one that's twice or three times the size. Especially when some of them appear twice the size ! We do have some ideas here - the intricate quick passing, usually involving Nick Timoney and Stuart McCloskey will come off on better days. However until we add to our options by cracking the consistenly scoring from 5m thing, when we don't do it from the initial line-out maul, we're really going to struggle. I have little doubt of our ability to score when we have space, but it's doing it when there's little but 120kg blokes in the way that's the conundrum. Exeter built their recent success on doing it successfully, and tbh, I'd contend that's all Munster have - Leinster seem to have both means with the options that a really good set of forwards provides for the half-back.

Could Ulster have won that ? Yes, possibly. Would Ulster have beaten either Leicester, Leinster, Racing 92 or La Rochelle ? Rather unlikely, the first perhaps, but not least when two of those four have €30m wage budgets. As others have said, I'd say that at least the URC final is where Ulster need to be to say the season is ok, and a win there in a one-off 80 minutes v Leinster is doable. And I really do want to watch that Ulster team more at Ravenhill this season.

As for the crowd - from around us, it seems all those who actually own the season-tickets seat bought them and turned up, rather than lending their season tickets to their friends who don't know much about the game. A very much better atmosphere indeed. I'd propose that, being Easter, this match was the substitute for the Christmas ex-Methody/Campbell/Wallace/Sullivan/RBAI/BRA pupils get together.... Certainly, there seemed to be lot fewer students behind the bars working than there were on the customer side. A 30 minute queue in normally one of the quietest bars to even get within 5 people of buying a couple of beers ? Came to watch rugby, not drink. £20 less for UR.

Btw, on another favourite topic, bought 3x seats (@£35 each) for Edinburgh. Their website is run by Ticketmaster too.... Not a booking fee in sight.

[MightyRearranger]

I was sat on that side of the ground and saw that breakdown and agree wholeheartedly that it was a penalty turnover. The ref gave their player an age on the ground with a number of Ulster players over the ball. It came out eventually in Toulouse’s side and 20 seconds later they score a try.

These are the fine lines in professional rugby and whilst yea people can argue that teams shouldn’t have to rely on that to win a game, but decisions like this are at the heart of it. There are fine lines at this level and a turnover in that instance would in my opinion have prevented their final try and more than likely would have ensured an Ulster victory. So you can carve it up whatever way you want, but to me that was the deciding factor last night and a ref who previously had been pretty quick to award penalties on the ground didn’t for this one moment. In that moment the game was lost. That’s not the players fault, they did all they could and whilst not ‘robbed’ that decision ensured victory was taken away from them.

It's true that the game probably pivoted in that moment, but there are many others where it could have too. An intercept pass not being thrown, a forward pass not being missed, players not getting penalised. It's easy enough to focus on the decisions that didn't go our way that cost us, but when I look back, I suspect if you were to draw up a list of all the missed calls or 50/50 decisions across the two ties I'd suspect they more or less balanced each other out.

I'm not sure what others think, but when I look back one area I think we really need to improve is our tactical kicking game. Ramos has a boot like a seige cannon, while Dupont and Ntmack aren't bad either. Watching the game yesterday, it seemed like there were a number of times that Ramos had the ball kicked straight to him and after the exchange we were 15 or 20m worse off. It was also a big difference when both teams were clearing their own lines, we'd get it out to just short of our own ten metre line, giving them a decent attacking line-out, while their clearances were regularly make it to the half way line or beyond. I'm not really sure how you address that? Could distance be improved by a kicking coach or similar?

[jean valjean]

Duponts kicking was something else. I don't think I've ever seen a scrum half clearing kick from a teams goal line reaching the opposition half. It even sounded different off the boot.

[MightyRearranger]

A final thought from the game, but Ethan McIlroy really game of age yesterday too. Think it was his best performance by a distance. Although solid, up until now I've thought of him as a dependable understudy to Stockdale, but if he keeps that up I'm not so sure. If we ever have the back three from last night, Stockdale and Adison all firing and ready to go it'd be some selection dilemma. Starting to get up there with Leinster trying to pick a back row...

[jean valjean]

A final thought from the game, but Ethan McIlroy really game of age yesterday too. Think it was his best performance by a distance. Although solid, up until now I've thought of him as a dependable understudy to Stockdale, but if he keeps that up I'm not so sure. If we ever have the back three from last night, Stockdale and Adison all firing and ready to go it'd be some selection dilemma. Starting to get up there with Leinster trying to pick a back row...

You'd have to wonder where sexton fits into the mix. With lowry, baloucoune, stockdale, Addison, lyttle, McIlroy, moxham to pick from, his chances will be few when all are fit (not likely granted). Can see the other provinces sniffing around our backs, especially munster with earls and zebo not getting any younger.

[MightyRearranger]

Not really sure what the craic is with him either, I see he got a hat-trick in Malone's last game. With that space he's obviously utterly deadly in attack, but must have weaknesses elsewhere or he'd been involved more often. I remember see him playing in an A's game against Leinster while still at school and he seemed to be a frighteningly good prospect.

[Cap'n Grumpy]

I knew we were in trouble when he the REF blew the first penalty and for not releasing and gave it to Toulouse who then reduced the lead from 3-6 .

The Ulster player had released the ball and the player holding was actually Toulouse . It was a decision made in the dressing room --- "first breakdown I'm blowing for non release "-- regardless ---

Seriously Rumn? Do you actually believe this guff?

That said on the night Toulouse were the better side but were the better side over two legs .

So in your opinion Toulouse were better on the night and over both legs, so what's yer beef?

Both sides had to play with 14 men for part of the game of the two red Cards Ulsters loss of a prop was much more telling then their loss of a wing especially in the last 10 minutes when Ulster also lost their fresh second row.

Ulster's red card came after 65 minutes. Toulouse's came after 10. Hmmm?

That said - if the players hadn't infringed like they did, they wouldn't have been carded, so they cannae complain.

note the difference at the end was only 1 point in favour of Toulouse .

It would be remiss of me if I didn't acknowledge that you did get something right.

Well done for noticing the aggregate scoreline.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

[Dave]

Not really sure what the craic is with him either, I see he got a hat-trick in Malone's last game. With that space he's obviously utterly deadly in attack, but must have weaknesses elsewhere or he'd been involved more often. I remember see him playing in an A's game against Leinster while still at school and he seemed to be a frighteningly good prospect.

It's a tough one. Matty was the preferred Rea for far too long.

[Dave]

The two legs perfectly summarised by McFarland, no complaints.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/61131012

Ulster: Tom O'Toole red card not the decisive moment in defeat, says Dan McFarland

Dan McFarland says Ulster's one-point aggregate defeat by Toulouse did not come down solely to Tom O'Toole's red card, but a number of key moments.

Prop O'Toole was dismissed with 15 minutes remaining in the second leg with Ulster leading the tie by three.

Antoine Dupont's converted try with five minutes left sent the defending champions into the last eight.

"Ultimately the game is decided because we did a couple of critical things that were wrong," McFarland said.

"Teams do that obviously, but if you want to win at this level against sides of the quality of Toulouse you can't afford to make those mistakes.

"It happens but just on the day we didn't quite get right."

Ulster brought a 26-20 advantage into their home leg, having secured a memorable win out in Toulouse after the French champions had been reduced to 14 men in the 10th minute.

However, that lead was wiped out before the half-hour mark in Belfast as the visitors scored two tries in quick succession - the first from Thomas Ramos after Romain Ntamack seared through Ulster's defence before the fly-half ran the length of the field for an intercept score five minutes later.

"I look at their two tries, like we gifted them two tries. A poor piece of defence let them through on the inside shoulder and an intercept pass in the space of five minutes," reflected McFarland.

"There was another critical call on James Hume off his feet at a breakdown and that was to me just not a penalty at all. That was another critical moment.

"When you watch their half-backs work and the quality of their play. Dupont is kicking the ball from literally under his own posts to 45 metres from his own line.

"We were piling pressure on them there and he does it regularly. It's just next level and that's what you can expect from the best player in the world."

After O'Toole's was shown red for a high hit on Anthony Jelonch, Ulster extended their lead through a John Cooney penalty before Toulouse worked their way up the field and patiently waited for space to open that would eventually allow Dupont in for the decisive score - the visitors winning the match 30-23 and the tie 50-49 on aggregare.

"Their try at the end obviously came off the back of having an extra man and being so potent, being able to stretch the field like they do," accepted McFarland.

"You could pick out any moment from the games. We gave a try away because we gave up an inside shoulder in defence. If we don't do that, that's not a try.

"Last week if the tackle area had been a little bit clearer, [referee] Wayne Barnes maybe would have given us the jackal penalty that would have meant we were 13 points up going into this leg.

"There are instances across the board. Equally there was probably a forward pass in the lead-up to one of our tries. There are plenty of things in the last two weeks that if we had done better we would have won but in the end it is what it is.

"We could have won it if we had been a little bit sharper in a couple of areas I'd expect us to be sharper in.

"We didn't quite get it right, but the margins are so small against a team like Toulouse, you're living on the edge the whole time and if you get anything wrong they're going to punish you."

Good to hear Dan isn't celebrating a defeat. He rightly points out how we should have secured/denied the necessary points. I had forgotten about the poor defending for their tries.