Ulster Team Talk Thread IV... Go On My Henderson...

JTA allowed to walk and French signed. What the bleedin hell is the story there. If the union blocked this, it's shyte.

Yeah, very possible. Kitchoff will be on a fair slice too. But there's a few salaries leaving with only Ewers and Kitchoff coming in. The academy lads that have been promoted won't be breaking the bank. It could have been a done deal on JTA. It's a pity.

Ah JTA wouldn't have been on anything close to 350k. But he's a Samoan international now so would potentially be gone at the same time as TOT, and he'll be 33 in November.

Staying on was a long shot.

Loss of revenue from the Champions Cup game that was moved wouldn't have helped either.

Given our finances I'm surprised we actually tried to get JTA back given we'll be spending big on Kitshoff as well. But if he was available for a reasonable price then I'd be furious with the IRFU (uncommon for us, I know). Moore is coming off an very serious injury, his injury history isn't great to start with and despite Tom O'Toole's improvement this year, he'll spend time with Ireland.

JTA's replacements will probably be getting decent game time so this will have an impact on us. Ben Griffin seems highly enough rated in AIL circles and on the other Leinster forum so I'll wait an see on him, we picked up Eric O'Sullivan from 1A as well after all. Apparently he can scrummage all right. French I'm less than enthused about. I remember reading on Munsterfans every now again that they hoped he'd push on the fans seemed to have some expectations of him, but one appearance across two head coaches (I think) speaks for itself. Now playing in Australia (not super rugby).

Who is the Ulster scrum coach at the moment.

French has decent physical attributes. He is fast for a prop, strong tackler or rocker.

Just poor hands and an inability to scrum let's him down.

Ben griffin is rated as a scrummager but his rating has gone up quiet a lot over the last year where Clontarf have played a 4 lock pack.

As luck will have it, Ulster just happen to be a famous developer of prodigious forwards. A true breeding ground for raw talents to nurture their ability and emerge as barnstorming polished all-rounders.

Any news on a Henderson contract? All seems very late and a bit quiet for a club captain. WC training squad announced on Tuesday.

That's great and all, but will he be available to Ulster next season? He doesn't play that much for Ulster in truth, but I still think losing him would be a massive blow almost more for the signals it would send out about Ulster.

Seems logical.

Either that or really bad to non existant planning.

Whatever way you look at it we have lost at least 10 players and from what I can tell have signed 3.

Promoting from the academy is great as long as it's done on merit, rather than a cost cutting exercise.

move to sustainable homegrown talent?

50% increase in academy uptake. All academy players to the very least development contracts.

Mention of a new rotation/selection Policy.

Now hopefully this materialises and young players progress!

In other news, if London Irish fold. Simmons would be worth picking up.

Seems your understanding was wrong. I wonder would Henderson consider Japan after the RWC.

Squad rotation would be good - mainly just McCann, Sheridan, Izzy and maybe flannery to see if they’re up to it. If Reid’s scrum has improved then maybe him as well. Felt like mcilroys minutes dropped as well but he was maybe injured.

so it seems like 8/9 academy players for next season which is up around 50%. There’s definitely a few more promising ones than usual, but I wonder if they planning on keeping up that intake? We didn’t have a single u18 in the Ireland squad and only 3 or 4 in the ‘B’ team, so quantity over quality won’t improve us long term and probably only serves as a money saving mechanism.

for similar reasons, I’m not a fan of development contracts for everyone. Sometimes you have to be ruthless. I get that there’s merit in giving everyone a shot but with some players you just know.

exact opposite of Munster then. They had a new game plan in mind with a new coach, and were woeful in the opening rounds and looked like they would be fighting for a champions cup place. They trusted that they the results would come because their players were good enough.

so I guess the question is, do we have they players to play another way? Can our coach implement a new game plan?

almost a redundant question for me because they way we play was never sustainable, so something has to change. Our forwards aren’t good/strong enough to bully other packs and our mauls never really troubled good teams.

My own take (with only a modicum of "knowing someone in the set-up" insight) would be -

Soper is a tremendous skills coach - he hasn't done it as assistant coach. I read folk on this thread not long ago writing about how we needed to get our forwards upskilled so that they could play the same sort of way as Leinster/Connacht. Short, short memories. Much of last season (21-22), and certainly the season before (20-21), we had brilliantly skilled forwards. We've never had crunching behemoths but we had accuracy and speed. Tip-on passes, great, incisive lines, offload-offload-offload. Done at pace. Part of the frustration of this season has been how that has dwindled. Our attack generally has been markedly less impressive this season - whether that is merely us going into our shell as a result of our slump, or whether it's simply the fading influence of Soper's skills work as time goes on, I don't know. But we need to get back there, and imho, need a freshening up amongst the coaching team.

Would we have been better if Payne had become assistant/attack coach? Maybe. Would Soper have been happy to stay on had Payne got it? Who knows.

Bell was a massive step down from Payne - at times our defence looked desperate. Although I thought our one-on-one tackling and organisation improved towards the end of the season - I'm not quite as despondent on that front as I was in January or thereabouts.

The IRFU forbade Toomaga-Allen from staying, and have forbidden Dan/Bryn from bringing in a better NIE flyhalf than Burns. No-one is under the illusion that he is good enough to win Europe with, but we aren't allowed to shop around. And in fairness, equally, his hands were on the reins in the games where we did play very well over the last few years.

There's a number of places where we're thinner next season than we were this. Lyttle is absolutely a loss. We are already at Defcon 4 for next season at tighthead, and a ball has not yet been kicked in anger.

We need on-field leaders. Crotchety, demanding, inspiring leaders. We lost to Connacht because we gave away 18 penalties (the most in any game we've played since 2011) - an on-field general would have pulled the fellas in and straightened them out. But no-one, not Burns, not Vermeulen, not Jordi Murphy, not Herring got us to adapt. Will Kitshoff or even Ewers improve matters? I'm sceptical. But if one of them did, it would go a long way to getting us back on track again, I reckon. I think the single biggest presence we could have benefited from, from these last fifteen years, was Johann Muller.

Anything else? Addison is apparently ready to hit the ground running (if that doesn’t break his leg) at the start of pre-season. Reffell will be like a new signing and, let’s not forget, will be 23 at the start of next season – over a year younger than Marcus Rea. Between Sean, and McCann really starting to kick on at the end of last season, hopefully there’ll be a young backrow coming together. Need another ground-hog, though.

Madigan still appears to be on the books. Or maybe not. Would love to see Curtis get some time at ten.

I know we’re all panicked about TH in October, but if there’s an yet another injury to Ronan Kelleher and Stewart plays in the World Cup, we’ve John Andrew and James McCormick. Potential baptism of fire for the young lad.

For now, attention turns to Ireland! Allez les verts!