Leinster v Ulster Friday 19.35

[carlow man]

Just in from the match and despite picking up 5 points and 8 tries I’m really p155ed off. Is it my blue tinted spectacles or is Clancy a complete clown. When my son played mini rugby the ref would sometimes penalise a team that was hammering the others to avoid a total pasting. It seemed like that tonight.

Nope, Clancy is a total shambles.....panto reffing...

Clancy should be sacked. Twice in the first half he ignored 2 high tackles that happened right in front of him and it needed to tmo to call it before he blew his whistle. That's unacceptable. The whole match he had no idea what's was going happen. It culminated with him asking leinster players if they were number 6?!!! When he was trying to sin bin our player. Just sums him up. Oh and that whiny monotone limerick accent made it unbearable!!

[Ruckedtobits]

Our key component, on both sides of the ball, is tempo. The first half was an excellent display of tempo in defence and attack. To play at high tempo you need excellent skills, defensively and in attack.

When we introduced a few changes, our teamwork and skills dropped and we gave Clancy and Murphy the opportunities to blow us off the park in the final quarter. There's quite a gap between a team we've prepared, even in five days, and a team with six replacements, mostly of a lower standard.

Well impressed by first half. Annoyed by 3rd quarter and pissed off by officials in last quarter.

Well done to the starting team.

[alanair]

On behalf of the decent referees of Ireland ( well Leinster) I apologise for the clown, that is Mr George Clancy

[curates_egg]

Shambolic, embarrassing final quarter.
The fact we emptied the bench is no excuse. We finished with some serious experience still on the pitch: Kearney, Healy, McFadden. They finished with a cobbled-together lineup: Timoney on the wing.
Clancy was atrocious as ever but that’s not all that was wrong.

Super first 50 minutes though. Clancy couldn’t find away to slow us after he gifted them their first try.

[blockhead]

Calm down folks, we were 33pts up with 15mins to go. It happens sometimes. Ulster are getting better though. The good coaching is doing it's job (that and lot and lots of Leinster recruits) which is a much better situation than the basket case of a few years back.
I have to admit, 25mins in and it dawned on me that it was Harry not Ross who was wearing 10. Excellent player.

[ronk]

Nice to see Roman Salanoa make his debut. Hard to think of many fast ascents from not playing rugby to pro level

He looked super nervous for his first scrum. And they engaged early. Locked out well enough with Connors in the row behind him (and Conor O'Brien playing flanker).

[ronk]

Defensively we left gaps because we were looking for gang tackles and leaving space unmarked. Have to cut that out.

[tingman]

1 penalty after Murphy's yellow card and Toland is telling at the ref to put another player in the bin!

Toland every bit as irritating as Clancy

He's a tool...a very blunt one at that.

[tingman]

Just in from the match and despite picking up 5 points and 8 tries I’m really p155ed off. Is it my blue tinted spectacles or is Clancy a complete clown. When my son played mini rugby the ref would sometimes penalise a team that was hammering the others to avoid a total pasting. It seemed like that tonight.

Agree - numbers on the board aside it was still a turkey shoot. Clancy is a just embarrassing.

[CiaranIrl]

Calm down folks, we were 33pts up with 15mins to go. It happens sometimes. Ulster are getting better though. The good coaching is doing it's job (that and lot and lots of Leinster recruits) which is a much better situation than the basket case of a few years back.
I have to admit, 25mins in and it dawned on me that it was Harry not Ross who was wearing 10. Excellent player.

When you look at the team, it's easy to say that the experience was perfect. Great result, great experience, and lessons to learn. But they have to actually learn those lessons,and for that to happen, they need an awful bollicking on Monday.

[tingman]

Home for Chrimbo and back from the game. We conceded 42 points to a fairly scratch Ulster side - everything else aside - thats a royal pain in the Aras.

[artaneboy]

Defensively we left gaps because we were looking for gang tackles and leaving space unmarked. Have to cut that out.

Well, it worked early on- and led to us snuffing our several of their attacks. So maybe not cut it out, so much, as choose the moment to attempt it more cannily.


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[wixfjord]

Alan O'Connor is awful mouthy. Could see he was trying to intimidate a few of our lads. Fardy put a stop to that pretty quickly...

Cursed at Clancy at one stage too, which is acceptable, but maybe not smart as captain!

[enby]

Clancy seems to think that when he has called "advantage" the attacking team is no longer bound by the laws of the game. One of the most blatant side entries since the days of McCaw took place right under his nose before the first Ulster try but he just let it go. He either didn't see it (a live possibility given his general incompetence ) or decided to ignore it because Ulster had a penalty advantage.

His incompetence was laid bare when he carded Murphy having spent an age trying and failing to find the 6.

The young lad who came on at full back for Ulster can be very proud of his debut.

[hugonaut]

Don't know what to say about that refereeing performance. It's pretty f*cking amazing that this lad has gone through his entire career with a huge chip on his shoulder against one team and it has just been waved through.

[Ruckedtobits]

Don't know what to say about that refereeing performance. It's pretty f*cking amazing that this lad has gone through his entire career with a huge chip on his shoulder against one team and it has just been waved through.

Totally agree and if there is any who doubt it, just watch the entirety of the 47th minute of game time in which he allowed Ulster three illegal side entries including a dangerous clear-out. Take him away and send him to AIL.

[Gearzbox2]

Very strange game, pretty shocking to concede 40+ points at home no matter what the situation
Whenever we held on to her ball in that first 50 mins we looked hard to live with
Totally switched off from ball retention focus in that last 25....And just invited them on to us time and time again

Front row went well, thought Dooley looked busy along with Cronin who especially had a good opening 40 mins
Fardy a bit quiet but Josh Murphy I thought looked good and ran the line out well
Back row looked a bit ragged but effective too

H Bryne is a nice player, has all the attributes to kick on
Robbie H was a power house, playing super stuff this year
Ferg’s cross field kick was hilarious, I’d say his heart was in his mouth as it flew across the pitch

All in all move on, but our defense will need to be hugely improved in Thomond

[carlow man]

Don't know what to say about that refereeing performance. It's pretty f*cking amazing that this lad has gone through his entire career with a huge chip on his shoulder against one team and it has just been waved through.

Totally agree and if there is any who doubt it, just watch the entirety of the 47th minute of game time in which he allowed Ulster three illegal side entries including a dangerous clear-out. Take him away and send him to AIL.

Dont send him to the ail, he will ruin the weekend for those teams then!! Give him a set of pens and a colouring book and tell him to stay in every weekend and do us all favour.

[Ruckedtobits]

As I looked out over a playing field this bright winter morning at a large group of Brent Geese recently arrived from some far flung Northern home, it struck me that at times in the first half, that was as close to a human murmuration as I have ever seen. The Leinster Blues swarmed and exploded and then swarmed in unison before diverging again into their smaller units.

Superb performance of teamwork and coaching.

But credit the Ulster twenty-three and their Coaching efforts which showed their resiliance and fitness to keep us scoreless, whilst adding three of their own tries, during the last 20 minutes of play from the 62th minutes. McFarland et al deserve a lot of credit as does Alan O'Connor, an annoying thorn in Leinster sides (literally) for much of the game for his abrasive, and often illegal, presence in the ribs of Leinster players. He has some engine and a hugely competitive outlook even if he rarely enters a ruck from the back foot or through the gate.

There are so many elements within this game to offer a Coaching Clinic. Any aspiring Coach could cut and paste possibly 20 clips of top class play from young players who have been well coached.

Looking forward now to seeing how the Southern / Western equivalent stacks up this evening.

[LeRouxIsPHat]

It was a pity about the end alright but I find it hard to be unhappy after we built up such a big lead and played some great rugby. Credit to Ulster for not giving up either. That team was sent up as canon fodder and suffered an unlucky yellow card (IMO), an early injury that forced them to play a 19 year old, and a horrible injury to Curtis yet they showed a lot of heart and a fair amount of quality to put up a big score themselves.

Loved the tempo we started with and we played some great stuff with lots of variety. Everyone was getting their hands on the ball and Ulster never knew where the threat was coming from either with ball in hand or through the boot. I say this every time I see Harry Byrne play but when he has the ball he seems to be able to pick out whatever skill/decision is required. He can look set to do one thing but then another option appears and he's able to take it at the last second. We often hear that the opposition don't know what a player is going to do but the problem is that his own team mates don't either, but Byrne isn't like that, players seem to love playing off him.

Josh Murphy was much better than I thought he could be in the second row. His work rate was off the charts and he seemed to really step up as a leader.

Porter had one really freakish sack at the lineout. It wasn't called in advance but he was alive to it and aborted a lift to make it. Incredible strength to manage it the way he did and particularly impressive to do it so close to our line.

Connors was fine but we certainly didn't see the best of him as a 6, early days though.

Dooley looked very lively and powerful, would love to see him kick on in the next two games and then appear in both European games.

I thought Deegan was quite mixed. He was excellent for the most part, looked really dynamic and hungry to be involved, but there were some annoying errors and he does fall off quite a few tackles that others have to complete for him.

I know there'll be tougher tests but I was massively impressed by Salanoa. His scrummaging technique looked a bit funny but he seemed to have the power to cope with what was thrown at him and looked really comfortable. He twice wrapped Ulster players up and threw them backwards, and had two very big hits. He was well able to keep up with play, knew where to be (good pillar defence for example), and was quick to hit rucks, which might be a low bar to set but considering the guy only started playing a couple of years ago I would say that that's really encouraging. Even the way he stepped in at 9 and threw a nice pass showed that he has a good rugby brain and a bit of skill, he's definitely not just an athlete, there's a rugby player in there too. That's a good base to work from but even with me being impressed you could see that he was a bit lost on their maul try and one of those big hits I mentioned resulted in him leaving a hole beside him. And he didn't carry and we couldn't see what his basics like ball presentation are like but all things considered (including that he was only a late call up and was making his pro debut) I thought he was superb.