This December isn’t all about reindeer’s and twinkly-eyed old elves and presents and such – for Ulster it also throws up a right balls of a fixture list, which promises to test the squad’s mettle to the full..
The Good…
Before going further though – let’s just luxuriate in the season so far… 12 competitive matches, 12 wins, an unprecedented start to the season for any club in the RaboDirect Pro12, and the only side unbeaten in all competitions in Europe this season. And with one exception, home crowds north of 10,000 –in fact, for the first time I can remember, I struggled to lay my hands on tickets for the Leinster match at Christmas, with the tickets on public sale selling out within an hour.
Mark Anscombe appears to have gelled with the other coaches, and we are seeing generally higher basic skill levels, more depth and variety in attack, with a defence that remains pretty mean.
The new players have all had favourable impacts, and while every coach routinely talks about how they will select purely on merit, competition for places etc, in Anscombe we appear to have someone who actually means it. Several younger players, and those who in previous seasons would have been regarded as fringe players, have been given the opportunity to rack up significant gametime, and have stepped up to the plate impressively.
This is a significant development, because these days squads win things, not teams, and in my view a squad can only develop if there is a clear path into and out of the starting XV over the course of a season on the back of performances in training, and on the pitch. In other words, having a de facto first XV which will always get the nod for big matches, with the rest of the squad picking up the slack if there’s an injury or a player is on international duty, doth not an effective squad create. It’s not good for morale, but equally it’s not good for performances – what’s the incentive for a ‘fringe’ player to tear up trees in training, or when he’s selected for the odd game, if everyone knows that he won’t have a whiff of the next matchday 23 in any case?
So as well as the extremely heartening performances we have seen from our established players (the Irish boys, the NIQs) and the new boys (Wilson, Williams and Bowe hitting the ground running, as well as pretty promising showings from Herring and Doyle) we have seen performance levels come on noticeably from players who have had a lower profile in past seasons – notably Paul Marshall, Callum Black and Lewis Stevenson, but also Mike McComish and Neil McComb, who have definitely upped their games. Now I’m not getting carried away, or saying that McComb looks set to displace Muller or anything (and I’m sure he wouldn’t think so either), but it seems to me that players like him are more motivated than they may previously have been, because there is more of a sense in Ulster these days that if you perform, you’ll get your shot.
And most heartening of all, to save the best until last, has been watching the ongoing development of our crop of outstanding young players. Most notable among them Paddy Jackson, Luke Marshall, Iain Henderson and Craig Gilroy (who has been around so long by this stage it’s easy to forget he’s only 21!) wholly deservedly breaking into the international reckoning (in fact if it wasn’t for Kidney’s predictably Munster-centric selections of ROG and POM, two of the three not in the mix against Argentina should be a bump up the ladder). However less heralded players like Michael Allen and the returning Michael Heaney appear to have caught the eyes of the coaches, and while neither of them look as likely as the aforementioned quartet to have a tilt at laying claim to a starting spot at this stage, they have both shown up well.
In general it looks like our main building blocks are very solid: excellent set piece, with a scrum that can be potent (3 penalty tries and counting); a very sound tactical kicking game, with PJ, Wallace, Payne, the Marshalls and Pienaar among others who are capable of putting telling boot to ball at the right time; a physical and well-organised defence; and increasingly varied and penetrative back play, on first- and multi-phase. We also look fit, usually finishing matches more strongly than the opposition, and physically strong, rarely losing the contacts over 80.
The Bad…
So then, a start to the season that has been going on perfect then, in terms of results – any negatives?
Once again Steven Ferris has missed much of the season through injury – while the good performance of the other back row players has mitigated his loss to a large extent, I can’t help but wonder how much of a role he can realistically play in this season and future ones. The same applies to Deccie Fitz. Also on the injury front, season-enders for Paddy McAllister and Chris Farrell were awfully bad news, as they both promised to have big seasons, and poor Robbie Diack, after apparently the pre-season of his life was very unlucky to have managed only one game before picking up an injury which kept him out until recently (although am I alone in thinking that his enforced selection in the second row is an extremely interesting development?)
In terms of performance, things have definitely moved forward – however we definitely have some more work to do. I think we need to up the efficiency at the breakdown, and reduce the penalty count. I am confident that we will continue to improve – at the start of the season we played pretty well, and you got the feeling that we had more to offer, particularly in the backs, but it wasn’t really until the away game against Cardiff until we really clicked. The exciting thing is that we have been racking up these results, but there should definitely be more to come.
And in fairness – we have once or twice had the bounce of the ball.. I was about to cite the Ospreys and Munster games – but actually on reflection I think that we did enough on both occasions to deserve the result at the end. In the former case we did what we haven’t done enough in recent years, which is to keep a tough away fixture pretty tight going into the final quarter before picking the opposition’s pocket (with a superb piece of end-to-end running rugby); and in the latter case despite a sub-par performance (and a very good Munster outing) we hauled our way back in front and outstanding defence won the day at the death.
But we undoubtedly caught a break in the Castres game, when we made horrendously hard work of notching a BP, and they inexplicably kept throwing the ball around at the death before turning it over to us and letting Ruan stroll through for the winning try. That may be the point that gets us a home QF, who knows.. And more recently, I must say I felt terribly sorry for Zebre that we nicked a barely deserved win at the death – definitely our worst performance of the season.
Still, luck comes and goes, and I’d rather be a beneficiary than a victim any day.
A Chill December?
So back to December – our fixtures to date haven’t been dollies, we have bumped into third-placed Glasgow twice, as well as Munster at home and Ospreys away. But December’s line-up could hardly be better chosen to give us a tough work-out, and show us exactly where we are. We managed to slip past Scarlets and now face Saints away, then after the return leg at Ravenhill we welcome bogey side Leinster (who have been pretending to be quite rubbish this season, but I’m not buying it yet..) before a year-end trip to Limerick. Everyone in the league will be keen to have a shot at us, after the start to the season we have had, but none more so than our provincial cousins – Leinster, who will be keen to re-affirm their top-dog status, and put us back in our box; and Munster to prove that any elevation of Ulster ahead of them in the Irish rugby consciousness has been very premature…
So what can we expect? If you look at the table today, Ulster are top with 43 points ahead of Scarlets with 34 followed by Leinster, Munster and Glasgow a couple of points back. All six have 4 games through to the end of Decemberwith all teams having two home and two away games.
Skipping ahead in the PRO12 to our only home game, against Leinster, yes our bogey side of late, but we have been playing better than them, and by this stage of the season, I expect us to win all our home games. Finally, the toughest trip is to Limerick – in past years the Irish away sides in these fixtures have tended to send a shadow team, will that happen this year? This is impossible to call, but the safe money is probably on a home win.
To my mind, therefore, while by this stage in the season, I’m in the happy position of expecting Ulster to win, or to put themselves in a position to win, every time we’re on the pitch, my baseline expectation would be to pick up 8 points against Treviso and Leinster at home, plus any try BP on offer; then on top of that pick up what we can against Scarlets and Munster. (I hope and assume incidentally that the players/coaches will have no such thoughts, i.e. about ‘winnable’ or ‘loseable’ matches in advance..) But if, say, we come through December with 10-12 points we could find ourselves further ahead of the second-placed team than we are now…
And in the HEC, we have the Saints back-to-back – Saints are having an ok season, top end of mid-table. The home side will be favourite in each match, but as we travel to to Northampton off the back of consecutive away victories against Treviso and Scarlets, we’ll fancy it. I remember the away game in Leicester last year, we seemed to lose conviction steadily through the match; this year I think we have more belief and bottle, and I would rather be going away to Saints than to Quins or Sarries..
And if, just maybe, we make it through to December with a clean sweep?? It has been many long years since Ulster were a force to be reckoned with, or to make their fans proud, and many years of talking about potential, rather than seeing it fulfilled. So far this season I have been reluctant to get too carried away, even as the victories have been piling up, for some superstitious fear of ‘jinxing’ our run, or seeing things hit the buffers.. And I am giving a hostage to fortune here, but if we are undefeated at New Year, it’s time to get very excited indeed..
Corrections, comments or questions?