Lowry and Moore available for Friday. Hendo, Baloucoune, Hume all training.
Positive news, would be some boost to get Hendy back for this weekend.
If all those boys were available we might actually have some legitimate selection debates at centre, wing and full back!
I hope Henderson gets a good break this summer and comes back next year fully fit to lead Ulster.
According to Murphy, "two or three" signings still to be announced.
He misses too many games for us, that said he will probably have a very reduced Irish role moving forward, and if there is one thing about him it's that he can hit the ground running after being out for a while, so I'd have no worries if he is deemed fit enough to start this weekend.
I saw that, he also said we lack experience in certain positions, but the players that I've seen rumoured...Rory McGuire and Matthew Devine are hardly experienced maybe there is a more high profile signing as well to come.
Yes it would be very concerning if we lose all the experience we have lost and replace them with unproven potentially decent players.
Allegedly he has also stated no new 9s coming in apart from academy so rules out Devine.
I wonder if its subjective to which European competition we get into
I was thinking that. Not being in the Champions Cup will hurt our ability to pay decent size contracts. Then again we're letting 13 players go from the senior squad and Academy and as things stand have only signed Augustus, although he is probably on a reasonable wedge.
Will it? What's the actual financial shortfall if we're in the challenge cup rather than the champions cup? What if we got home knockout games?
Does anyone have any actual numbers/facts to hand? Surely a sold-out home semi-final in the challenge cup would see us bring in more over the season than out in the pools stages or an away last-of-16 round in the champions cup?
There is bound to less TV money for a start, I dont think Challenge Cup pool matches are even televised, and Ulster pretty much always sell out (or very close) their two home European games, will they do that in the Challenge Cup?
On a separate point, has it ever occurred to the powers that be that there isn't enough club/provincial rugby? Ulster have played 11 home games this season. Fair enough the top sides will get another 2 or 3 home games through play offs in the two competitions, but surely 11 home games a season isn't sustainable. That's less than 1 match a month in a calendar year (obviously...).
Time for an additional competition to lock in some more games. Some sort of Cup between the British and Irish countries maybe, just to add a couple extra home games to the calendar. TV money and crowd attendance would more than cover overheads so it would bring more cash to the table for everyone, and keep the momentum going for match attending spectators. Sometimes the gaps during the season are painful, you can easily go from the start of January to mid March without a home match which is a nonsense IMO.
To go back to the original point, yes maybe if we secure a couple of home play off matches in the Challenge Cup that would actually offset the financial loss, so maybe you have a point. But sure it's Ulster, you know we'll draw the best French team and probably someone like Northampton in the pool stage and end up away to the Bulls in the last 16....it's all part of the deal we did with the Devil in return for 1999 you see..
Challenge cup matches are absolutely televised, and Premiere TV do a good job of giving them pretty much equal billing and flagging them up while watching Challenge cup coverage.
good Ulster side. Getting Henderson and Izzy to last most of the match will be paramount. Both can tire in the 2nd half and neither have much rugby under their belt.
Can you explain the last part of your final sentence as I can't quite grasp what you mean?
It was a joke.
Given our fortunes over the last 26 years it seems to me that we did a deal with the Devil to win the European Cup in 1999 in return for 26 years (at least) of disappointment.
Fair enough, I've never noticed the pool matches being on before, but I've never been on the lookout for them.
Match thread here
dire watch
I don't see how Murphy turns this around next season. We are potentially looking at least a couple of years outside the top 8
If Ulster were a horse they'd be calling in the knacker's lorry for fallen animals. I suppose we will all turn up next season with the usual optimism……..unplaced over the last 4 or 5 seasons as it turned out. To misuse a biblical quotation and also with a nod to the essayist and poet Alexander Pope, "We may face many challenges in this fallen world. However, because “hope springs eternal” in our souls, we can choose to overcome fear and place our hope in *Richie* in any circumstances.."
It is thoroughly depressing to be an Ulster supporter at the moment. Perhaps I have made it worse as I just sold some of my guitars and one in particular …a 1963 Stratocaster has made me hugely regret doing it but at my age it…and many others are just gathering dust. They say that clearing out old possessions can be cathartic…..maybe they don't mean 60-year-old Strats…. So maybe the 'cleansing' of our squad will reinvigorate things but I can't say it has done that for me in this instance. I have sold a lot of my collection over the last few years without much regret. I'll get over the guitar stuff but the rugby is more important. It is sometimes easy to forget that the staff and players are humans with feelings and emotions and families and children and mortgages etc.
I really think that demographics and other changes in society in Ulster have so weakened the foundations of rugby that we will never recover to be a force again. Looking back to my circle of friends from school and university days, ALL of our children with only one exception now live in GB and their children, many now post primary age all are growing up in England and Scotland.
Comes back to the same old talking point around getting kids from 'non-traditional' backgrounds playing. Playing for clubs and then The Ulster branch actually treating clubs on a level playing field with schools.
I watch my local GAA teams play and see so many great athletes that could have made excellent rugby players. Earning a living from sport.
Even if we start now, it would be 10years before we'd see results.
i saw online that Sheridan has been finishing his degree and that's why he has been out of the team for stretches of this season.
Signed Crean and McGuire.
2 Young props to go with our young props, although both appear to be rated?
Willing to give them the benefit of the doubt but initial thoughts on Crean when he played this season was that he was small for a LH and in our underpowered tight five a big LH would have helped. McGuire is obviously a unit and if TOT moves across as has been suggested then we've maybe got some ballast on both sides of the scrum finally, but a big second row would really help with our shove. Fingers crossed we have one on the way
Good luck to the two lads. Its absolutely not their doing that Ulster are in the position they are which is why there has been a bit of negativity about these signings on social media which is pretty unfair of these two.
The issue here is that Richie Murphy stated last week that we had a bit of inexperience in certain positions and there'd be 2 or 3 signings still to come. These two signings won't address that inexperience, they will do the opposite.
I did see something on X earlier once again linking Ciaran Frawley with us. I'd take him in a heartbeat, but we really really need an experienced operator at LH.
I thought Crean did OK on the one occasion I saw him play (may have been the Sharks game?). I don't think I've ever knowingly watched McGuire play, but I believe he started ahead of Wilson for the U20s and given how much I rate Wilson that must be a good sign. That said has he featured at all for Leinster?
From what I can find he's averaged 10 minutes in 5 bench appearances for Leinster this season. This definitely isn't meant as criticism of the 2 lads I hope they turn out to be wonder signings and will fully support them, it's just as you said there's an experience gap at prop and neither signing addresses that. We can't afford a Slimani but I think we all hoped for a signing of that experience/scrum nous.
Augustus called up to Springboks camp. 🙄🙄🙄
To be away half the season now, it's just getting comical
Even if he doesn't play when away with SA, he'll miss pre-season training. So that will be the excuse for the season ahead.
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