View from the Sofa: The Great Escape!

I probably spent more time trying to decide on the title and picture for this piece than I actually spent writing it and, don’t tell me, I know,  it shows! I just couldn’t decide if it was a “Great Escape” or a “Daylight Robbery” by Ulster so in the end I decided on a bit of mix and match.

I truth it was a dour match with neither side doing enough to deserve a win. There will be plenty prepared to write the many handling errors off as down to the conditions,  but to me the error count was down to the fairly limited game plans that both teams displayed. Game plans so limited and predictable that both defences were able to arrive with the ball.

There were some flashes of enterprise with Sean Lamont performing well for Scarlets and Jackson, Spence and Gilroy giving us a glimpse of things to come but if Pienaar hadn’t slotted the ball over in the dying seconds, this would have been regarded as a shockingly bad performance by Ulster.

Once again the pack failed to perform as a unit. OK there were one or two good individual displays of technical competence with Kyriacou and Pienaar being particularly impressive in the line outs but the pack seem very disjointed in open play being out fought and out manoeuvred at the break down resulting in turnovers or static ball and Court took far to long to assert himself in the scrum.

I know I keep referring to the back row balance and I am getting more and more irate with the continued insistence of playing Wannenburg at eight. Diack, when match fit, and Henry are better eights than Pedrie and both are better eights than they are six’s and sevens and Pedrie is the best six that we have outside of Ferris.

However all these players, and TJ Anderson while he was on, were played out of position throughout the game. It seems that  the coaches are so determined to have both Ferris and Wannenburg on the pitch for the Heineken match against  Northampton that they are prepared to shuffle everyone else round to suit. For me it is not working and it really limits our tactics in broken play.

If Ulster are to move up a level on a consistent basis, and do so with with home grown players, they have to develop a set of forwards that are comfortable on the ball, forwards that can off load and move the point of attack because without Ferris we don’t have the grunt or explosive power to smash it up the middle – and we all know that big Stevie is not indestructible, in fact far from it.

Our lack of go forward ball, with the exception of Gilroy, Spence and Jackson who did make a few breaks past the gain line, certainly didn’t help Wallace and Trimble on their return from pine warming and bag holding duties with the Ireland side. Don’t exactly know if they were on a higher or lower level than the rest of the team but they were certainly on a different level and at times on a different planet. However in their case I’m more inclined to write off their bumbles and fumbles as one of those days.

If that pair had been on form it might have been a different story but at least it gave us a chance to gauge the cahones on Pienaar. He for one was not found wanting!

I still don’t know if we escaped with a deserved win or stole this one?

What do you think?

More like this:

• PRO12: Scarlets 24 Ulster 17.
• PRO12: Ulster and Scarlets Teams Announced.
• Magners League: Squad for Glasgow – who’s in the team?
• Magners League: Team for Scarlets?