Ulster Captain Lizzie Ballentine comes under close attention from the Munster defence.
The Front Row Union caught up with Ulster Women’s Captain Lizzie Ballentine and Ulster Women’s Coach Benjy Van Der Byl to get their reaction on the Ulster performance during the recent Inter Provincial Series.
Despite showing significant improvement Ulster still only finished third in the four team series. They got off to a disappointing start losing to Leinster in the opening round, but nearly caused a major shock in the next round only narrowly failing to beat Munster (the Women’s Interprovincial champions for the last 6 seasons) in Limerick. The Ulster girls then recorded their first win in two seasons by beating Connacht in Ballymoney last weekend to finish off the series on a high.
This is the second season in coach Benjy Van Der Byl’s redevelopment plan and Ulster continued to blood new faces this season with a fair degree of success with Gemma McCutcheon, Ashleigh Baxter, and Nikki Caughey all having impressive debuts at Inter Provincial level. Crucially Ulster also managed to fit in a complete series of games for the members of the squad outside the match day 22 giving Ulster Women a broader depth of experience than ever before.
Speaking to the Front Row Union, Van Der Byl reflected on this seasons achievements:
We felt we had a great inter provincial series. We have had a solid squad throughout the series and the additional games that were organised for the squad, or “development”, players were a great help. With these games taking place it meant our fringe players were getting game time and playing quality opposition. In the past we have found the gap between development, AIL2 Women’s Leagues and AIL 1 are too big, so this is a good way of bring players up to speed and up to the physicality of the game!
We used less players this season than last and that comes down to players being fitter and stronger. We started training in January and kept it going with one session a month! This helped us work with players and gave us time to develop skills that we don’t get time to do during the lead up to the Interpro’s.
We are making progress but the movement of players is a lot higher that other sports with girls getting married and having babies etc., so it’s really good to work from a broad base.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all clubs who sent their players up for training. This really helped. We used a large coaching panel this season, we needed to with the girls playing in so many different clubs across the province, so I’d like to thank all the coaches who gave of their time!
Finishing 3rd is a great achievement for us and our goal is to move higher. With the help from the clubs, Ulster Rugby and the women who play we can reach these goals. We need to be producing fitter and stronger players that will improve our performances at club level and get more Ulster teams in the AIL 1.
The regional development system is working well and there are some great young girls coming through the system. We need to keep the grass roots of the Women’s game going and try and support clubs that are struggling with development and recruitment.
Women’s Captain Lizzie Ballentine also commented on the highs and lows of the short Inter Provincial season noting that it was one where Ulster built up a fair bit of momentum as the games progressed:
This has to go down as a successful tournament for the squad, performances have improved, a lot of new talent has been introduced and we’ve finally got the result that we needed.
The improvement over the past few weeks has been obvious, although it does highlight the main disappointment of the season in that we only performed for 20 minutes against Leinster when we showed later on we were capable of so much more.
However there are definitely more positives than negatives to take away from this season. The backline, with the blend of youth and experience, characterised in the centre combination of Laura Nicholl and Nikki Caughey, really showed what they could do in attack. The fact that it was never the same 15 that started shows the strength in depth that we are getting and a massive thanks must go out to the clubs and their coaches for that.
We’re far from the finished article but hopefully the buzz created in the past couple of weeks will carry on throughout the club season and into pre season for next year. We’ll continue to build and hopefully provide three 80 minute performances next season.
The Ulster Women’s Club season kicks off on the 2nd October with Cooke competing in AIL1 and Belfast Harlequins, Cavan, Carrick, City of Derry and Enniskillen all competing in what promises to be a highly competitive and entertaining AIL 2N.
Women’s games are played on Sunday afternoons around 1:00pm so why not get along this season and give our girls your support. Check this site or contact any of the above clubs for details.
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