We had predicted after the reasonable display against a miss-firing France that Kidney would stick pretty much with the same team and that team would inevitably loose to either Scotland or Wales. As it happened it was Wales that we lost to but it could so easily have been to both.
Ireland are a team playing out of fear of losing. Yes they can raise their game occasionally, and the match against England may be just the occasion, but against our Celtic cousins with all the familiarity of the Magners League we are bottling it.
It’s something that, here in Ulster, we’re pretty familiar with over the last few seasons. Yep we’ve had the big gung-ho games and we’ve put away all the big European teams with something to spare only to be turned over the following week with alarming ease.
You could just about live with that if Ulster had been beating the teams they should have been beating but for every European night of magic we’ve also had a Magners League business end night of dross where Ulster stopped thinking about winning and concentrated on not losing with the inevitable outcome.
Teams . . .
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