Ulster vs Munster, Fri 3 Jan, 7:35pm, Eir

Worst Munster performance this season by a long way

Stuart McCloskey made metres every time he had the ball, was immense.

Could make the 12 jersey his for the 6 nations.

A lot of individual mistakes from Munster for the Ulster tries

First try came from a pretty iinnocuous kick from Daly

Not sure if it was pre planned but Ulster manufactured a 3v1 on the touchline, Lovely support line and finish from Cooney

I'm not sure there is much Earls can do there

https://twitter.com/eirSport/status/1213187757205573632

2nd try came after I think Loughman gave away the initial penalty, great carry by Henderson and Munster are in trouble

Great pass from McCloskey once the advantage was given, Earls should have stayed out on Baloucoune and trusted Joey to make the tackle

https://twitter.com/SportTG4/status/1213224094679871488


Things weren't looking too bad from a Munster POV at HT. 2nd half was a disaster

A stupid penalty, this time given away by Earls led to this try


https://twitter.com/eirSport/status/1213198540572368897

Lovely stuff from Stuart McCloskey, Looks like he is going to make another big carry, then at the last second makes a pass to send Rea through

Darren O'Shea doubles up on McCloskey which creates the space for Rea. O'Shea needs to do better there

4th try kind of sums up the match, Ulster just bullying their way past Munster, they make ground with each carry, very poor from Munster

https://twitter.com/SportTG4/status/1213232537180557313


Good read by Stockdale here

https://twitter.com/eirSport/status/1213204563320291328

The pass from Joey was unsympathetic, but Arnold has to has to hold onto the ball


Have no idea how we didn't concede a yellow card until the Cloete one

Didn't see much from Botha or JO'D last night who have both been having great seasons

Centres will need to look at themsleves after the performance McCloskey gave

Goggin trying to go outside Stockdale 1m out from the sideline and his "mark" were bizarre

Earls was really poor

A few positives

Murray and Carbery did well.

Killer made a good impact off the bench

Daly was brilliant, depending on Conways fitness he may start in Paris on the wing

We gave the Ulster lineout plenty of bother (which in turn makes the scoreline look even worse)

Though we defended the maul well

Knox didn't look out of place

redved wrote: »

I'm not convinced that JVG is at the same level as Rassie

Well Rassie is a World Cup winning coach and when he was in charge of Munster we were accused of being blunt in attack and one dimensional. The same people are now accusing us of being inconsistent and loose and not playing well as a team.

When you try to switch to a new style of play it takes a long time for the players to become fluent and to get to know each other and trust that they will be in a certain area of the pitch to collect the offload or pop pass or chase the break or kick etc, especially this year when the international’s all missed the whole pre-season and have barely played together due to injury and their their game time being managed after the RWC

In terms of this site, I don't recall there being too much discussion at all about Cooney being left behind. He was largely viewed as an outsider and was cut in the first round of cuts with Haley and Bealham. He didn't deserve to be in that group but I really don't think there was much outcry at the time? A few posts that it was harsh on him but that was about it.

In terms of Cooney this season versus last, he has absolutely reached another level this year. He's taken a much firmer involvement in steering Ulster and stamped out a lot of silly little unforced errors that he was prone to. On form, he should be starting for Ireland with McGrath, Blade and JGP fighting it out for the 22 spot.

Cooney should always have gone to Japan as back up scrum half. It was the biggest selection mistake of previous regime. He was playing well enough last season to be comfortably ahead of all the others bar Murray. Yes he is playing even better this season and now the debate is whether he should start ahead of Murray. He is nailed on for the 23 now, it’s just a question of whether he starts against Scotland. There is absolutely no doubt that many posters on here didn’t appreciate what he brought to the table.

Had a look back to hon here when the RWC squad was announced

Very few people questioning the decision not to bring Cooney

It was all about bringing McGrath over Marmion and Kleyn over Toner

Any Ulster fan will be able to tell you that Cooney's been no better this year than last.
He had been absolutely immense for us since he came here.

The same goes for McCloskey, the last few years.

Ulster as a team are playing much better, that's the big change this year I think. You could see it starting last year (should have beaten Leinster in the QF for example) but they've pushed on again.

A lot / most of that credit must go to the pack, knew our tight 5 should have had the winning last night but the back row as well were just superb.
That's been our weakness since about 2013.

I said it at the time, we should have taken Cooney and Marmion to the World Cup.
Murray and McGrath are ordinary and have been for a while.
Cooney and Marmion offer a faster platform.

All the talk I remember of Cooney was that he could travel as 3rd scrummie and cover 10. Not sure many were calling for him ahead of Marmion initially and once the squad was announced then it was all mc grath\marmion debate.

Only because he was cut so early, there was no point discussing it when Schmidt obviously didn’t see Cooney as a preferred option well before the squad was finally picked.
It was clear that Schmidt had Murray as staring 9 no matter what, and then it was between Marmion and McGrath, and Schmidt still picked the wrong backup.
Schmidt really selected poorly, out of form players got a free ride and the team tanked because of it.

Former Former wrote: »

Not really.

Like, he has quite literally never played like this in his life before. I don't know if it's the current Ulster coach, the freedom he's been given, maybe he just loves Belfast, whatever, but this isn't the John Cooney we've known for the last six or seven years.

If he'd played like this last season, things would have been different.

It's great to see, especially if Murray doesn't look to be coming back to form in any great hurry.

had a lot of injury in his early career - but when he played he was always excellent - I always thought he was better than McGrath - last year he was playing well , better than Murray and Joe gave him a couple of minutes at the end of some 6 nations games , think he scored a try in his little cameo, then got cut from the bigger squad - Joe and his 2019 favouritisms - I will admit he is playing his best rugby now, still he would be right to feal aggrieved for his treatment under Joe.

Evie Icy Teenager wrote: »

He was apparently told by Schmidt that his defence wasn't good enough to make the squad, think it was on either Baz&Andrew or one of the similar podcasts he mentioned it.

Joe was probably too busy writing his book to see that :rolleyes:

ps I'll have to let go of my 2019 Joe resentment - and remember the good times.