We’ve taken advantage of the free week in the PRO12 to have a look at the player statistics for this season i.e. who’s been doing what and how often.

Will it give us any insight into the next two, or possibly four games? Probably not, but there were certainly a few surprises for me. 

Matches Played 

So far Ulster have played 26 matches in the regular season, 20 in the PRO12 and 6 in Europe. We have recorded 16 wins and 10 losses, doing season doubles over Treviso, Dragons, Toulouse, Connacht, Oyonnax and Zebre along the way. 

Unfortunately we’ve also had Munster, Scarlets and Saracens do the double over us, Saracens, in particular, recording a couple of comprehensive wins in Europe which put a bit of a dampener on the season! 

Players Used

Ulster have named a total of 47 players in the 26 matches though three, David Busby, Lorcan Dow¹ and Paul Rowley, didn’t get on the pitch, so 44 players were actually used.

Of those players the most minutes on the pitch threw up a few surprises. 

I assumed that the ever reliable Franco van der Merwe would be out in front but he’s currently trailing the “player of the season so far”, Craig Gilroy. Both have made 23 appearances with Gilly averaging 74 minutes per game compared to Franco’s 73. 

Rob Herring and Ricky Lutton have both made 24 appearances but, with Rob averaging 50 mins and Ricky 43, neither have made it into the Top 6. I am somewhat surprised at the minutes clocked up by Jacko and Diack.

It’s also been a good seasons for two of our departing players with Nick Williams coming in at 8th, with an impressive 1206 minutes in his 19 appearances. Rory Scholes made 17 appearances with 811 minutes on the pitch to end up in 20th place. 

Also worthy of note is Roger Wilson, the granddaddy of the squad, who clocked up 1176 minutes in 23 appearances and he didn’t need his Zimmer frame once! 

Most Points

Ulster have scored 584 points in all competitions coming from 73 tries (including 3 penalty tries), 57 conversions, 32 penalties and 3 drop goals.

With Jackson taking over kicking duties this season it’s the first time that Pienaar has dropped out of the in the Top 6 since he started at Ulster. 

Gilroy, Williams, Reidy and Luke Marshall are all there thanks to their tries with McCloskey and Humphreys both adding 19 points, to their try totals, from the boot. 

Tries Scored

The 73 tries scored have come from 25 different players with the forwards claiming 24 (including 3 penalty tries) to the backs 49, but a whopping 57%, or 42 tries, have come from just eight players.

Gilroy leads the way with 10 and Luke Marshall chips in with 6, Reidy and Williams show an impressive strike rate with 5 each, keeping those backs honest! However the best strike rate of all is Jared Payne with 4 tries from 4 games. I wonder how we’d be looking if he’d been available for a few more games! 

Bad Boys

There have been 11 Yellow Cards this season, 4 in Europe and 7 in the PRO12. It’s down quite a bit on previous years and I think we’re leading the Fair Play league in the PRO12 though they’re only showing 6 YC’s in their table. 

Ulster Captain, Rory Best, leads the way with 2 yellows, the rest of the bad boys being Wiehahn Herbst, Stuart McCloskey, Nick Williams, Paddy Jackson, Luke Marshall, Craig Gilroy, Roger Wilson, Chris Henry and Andrew Trimble.

Tut, tut, tut!  

1. See comments below ↩︎