There is a touch of the, “What did the Romans ever do for us?” when you examine Matt Williams’ time with the Red Hand. By all accounts he put in a sound infrastructure and bolstered the coaching staff but as with the Romans there was a price to pay.
He is credited with bringing through youth but for every success there was a disproportionate level of failure. It could also be argued that the system for bringing through youth was already in place and was just a natural progression for Allan Clarke’s highly successful Academy programme.
The season can be regarded as disappointing with a 33% win ratio and an eighth place finish in the Magners League and only two wins in the Heineken Cup but Williams was always quick to point to “what would have been” if Ulster had converted a few narrow losses into wins. However it is equally valid to point out that without wins over Munster away, Harlequins at home and if Glasgow and Connacht had converted their last minute kicks the season would have been regarded as an out and out disaster.
Williams recruitment policy was equally hit and miss. We’ll ignore Humphreys here as I’m not sure he was a Williams recruitment, but what do we make of the rest?
O’Donoghue is the only one to have come through the season with his reputation enhanced.
Botha did a job and improved the scrum but still appears to be struggling with the Northern Hemisphere interpretations of binding and he gave away far too many free kicks and penalties at scrum time and was yellow carded twice for continued technical infringements.
Diack has undoubted potential but his game never really moved on this season and he has yet to show that he can dominate the back of the scrum. He does appear to have the potential and injuries played their part.
Willis appears to be another for the long term but was injured for the bulk of the season and needs to bulk up and can be bullied out of a game.
Nagusa was an out an out disappointment and only of use if he finds himself in space. Poor tackling and positional play and missing for a large part of the season.
Schifcofske, brought in for his place kicking, failed to live up to his billing but does have a reasonable all round game.
Not overly successful with the new recruits so how well did he develop the rest of the team?
Rory slipped from his own exceptionally high standards, particularly with the line outs, Boss and Trimble went backwards, Young and Fitzpatrick in and out of favour as were Humphreys and O’Connor at various stages of the season, the discarding of Humphreys being the hardest decision to understand given the overall effectiveness of his displays. Paddy should have been rested after his International injuries and may never be the same again and Pollock played to the end of the season despite needing an operation. McCullough was chopped and changed and Caldwell continued to frustrate. Henry showed potential but was underused as were TJ and McCrea.
Cave, Whitten, Court and Danielli played above expectations and the rest of the squat performed as expected.
So, what did Matt do for us?
He put in place the infrastructure to make Ulster a successful team and by all accounts, together with David Humphreys, he has made Ulster Rugby more professional behind the scenes. However, through either miss-management, or lack of motivation, or lack of time, he did fail to put the required product out on the pitch.
All things considered, if Ulster Rugby recruit wisely and recruit a coach who can address the man management and selection issues then things could turn around very quickly for Ulster Rugby and next season could be very exciting indeed.
New coach, new stand, new team? Don’t miss a minute of next season at Ulster Rugby order your season ticket now .
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