Ulster v Treviso Fri. 7th Oct

First topic message reminder :

Ulster have named their team for their RaboDirect PRO12 match against Treviso at Ravenhill this Friday (kick off 7.05pm).

Ulster: J Payne; C Gilroy, D Cave, N Spence, I Whitten; I Humphreys, P Marshall; D Fitzpatrick, A Kyriacou, J Cronin, T Barker, D Tuohy, P Wannenburg, M McComish, C Henry (capt).

Replacements: N Brady, K McCall, A Macklin, L Stevenson, R Diack, I Porter, P Jackson, A D'Arcy.
Backs

No i would have Danielli benching Clive and Jackson at 10 before Wallace.

Standulstermen wrote:I dont know notch. Its something that bothers me. I wouldnt necessarily start Jackson with Paul Marshall. when Pienaar returns i wouldnt mind. I agree with you it wont happen. we can speculate on here and the guys on here i dont think would mind seeing Jackson learn on the job even if it costs us at times. the majority of fans though would not share that view

Jackson's kicking in the Ospreys game was very controlled and certainly better than what we saw from iH on Friday. I agree he wasn't as good in the pressure of Rodney Parade but then this is all new territory for him. Something else in Jackson's favour is his willingness to make tackles, something Ian was reluctant to do (maybe protecting his injury). I'm not calling for Paddy over Ian but IMO he has shown enough to let McL consider him for the bench especially if Pienaar is inside and Wallace outside him.

I would agree aukster but there is no way McL will have a back up 10 on the bench when he has 2 on the pitch imo. I would be inclined to look at Jackson with Pienaar at 9.

So what starting backline do you all want to see when the internationals return?

9.Pienaar
10. Jackson
11. Gilroy
12. Wallace
13.Cave
14. Trimble
15. D'arcy

or

9.Pienaar
10. Humph
11.Gilroy
12.Marshall
13.Spence
14. Trimble
15. D'arcy

Those two are pretty good options. It would be very bold to try Jackson and Marshall at the same time but maybe thats a good thing

Yeah they both look good, though I think Wallace will be starting in both teams. I think it will be:

9) Pienaar
10) iHumph
11) Gilroy
12) Wallace
13) Cave
14) Trimble
15) D'Arcy

21) Marshall/Porter
22) Marshall
23) Spence

Wallace/Pienaar is enough cover at 10 really to have Jackson on the bench, but it is unfortunate to see him miss out when he has shown how talented he really is. Marshall and Spence is the future centre partnership for Ulster and potentially Ireland imo, but I think Wallace/Cave will be our starting centres for the meantime. Not sure how long that will last though.

Rory, my backline would be;

9 Ruan Pienaar
10 Ian Humphreys
11 Andrew Trimble
12 Paddy Wallace
13 Nevin Spence
14 Craig Gilroy
15 Simon Danielli

21 Ian Porter
22 Darren Cave
23 Adam D'Arcy

Paddy Jackson, Luke Marshall, Ian Whitten and Conor Gaston as our reserves.

Can't believe we've lost Payne, what a massive kick in the goolies. I really do no rate Danielli as a fullback, or D'Arcy. D'Arcy is better if he can sort his game out. Right now he looks flaky. He and Danielli should have a game each. Thats what we have before we play ASM Clermont Auvergne at Ravenhill in a make or break clash; two games. Then we are away to Leicester.

Time to get it right. Internationals can't get back quickly enough.

The Great Aukster wrote:I've obviously watched a different Ulster in a parallel universe. In the game I saw Humphreys had a shocker kicking out of hand and off the tee, his passing made Marshall look like William Tell. Jackson on the other hand did very well for a rookie dropped in at the deep end behind two woeful forward performances in Wales.

+ 1

I still think, if we were playin with a full deck right now we would have

9 pienaar
10 Wallace
11 Gilroy
12 spence
13 cave
14 Trimble
15 Danielli

If not forever, at least to show the other poor performers that they really need to up their game.

As poor as we have been, spence and cave do not deserve to miss out in place of Wallace at centre whilst Humph is allowed to keep his place.

That would be poor management. Wallace at 10 for scarlets game at very least would serve to reward cave and spence whilst showing humph his performance is unacceptable.

I prefer your team Notch actually, I would rather Spence started however I am not sure he would replace Cave. As for playing both Spence and Cave together I don't think that combination works. No creative spark which the likes of Wallace/Marshall offers from 12.

Humphreys played pretty well against the Blues, poorly in our first two games though. Form is temporary but...

I'd love to get on board the Jackson/Wallace bandwagon but I know either of these players playing at their very best at 10 aren't as good as Humph at his very best. I know we need Humph at top form for Clermont and Leicester if we are to stand a chance. So we must persevere and get him into some form. Having Pienaar and Wallace either side of him will help immensely, as will a few weeks training as he tries to shake off this knock he's carrying.

I think guys are quite harsh on him. There's a lot of jumping to conclusions on the back of a few poor games outside a disaster of a scrum-half when he's been carrying an injury all season. He can come good, we know this.

Does anybody know when the WC players come back into the squad? I take it they get a few weeks break so will it be Clermont in the HC?

marty2086 wrote:Does anybody know when the WC players come back into the squad? I take it they get a few weeks break so will it be Clermont in the HC?

i think the consensus is marty that the players who didnt get much game time will be back sooner like court wallace and trimble ruan and muller and danielli.

Maybe ferris and Best will get an extra week.

Agree. Ferris & Best are likely to get a break, but no doubt we need them all back. Regardless of how players have performed up to date, the back line and the 3 cover backs on the bench is fairly straight forward.

Regarding Hump, yeah poor game, but we must remember he was back from injury himself...and lets not forget his ability as shown last year. He will be at 10 and he should be!

However for all of those guys coming back from the world cup, it could go 1 of two ways. Disappointed to come home early, they may be ready to take it out by performing in the Pro12.

Got to be hard though for them though....All of them have had a disappointing early exit in a WC QF in front of thousands in NZ....Within 2 days they are back to Belfast preparing for Scarlets away in front of 6,000.

Also, remember most (except Ferris & Best) have had limited match time and may take time to bed in and find their form.

Does anyone have a good first week back at work after a holiday

I think (hope) Pienaar will be the catalyst that springs iHumph into action. I wouldn't be in favour of dropping him but would think he needs to up his game otherwise McLaughlin will have no other option. I don't think I would play Jackson in any of the HC games so if we need to change it I would play Wallace at 10.
At full back I would look at Darcy first then possibly Gilroy? I wasn't convinced by Danielli at FB when he played a couple of times there last season. Gilroy has played there for the U20's.

Don't know why people are giving Hump a hard time, we shouldn't be expecting him to play like last season.

2 seasons ago he was good in some games terrible the others
last season with Pienaar he was good for most of the season.

So at the minute without Pienaar we know he will be either good or bad, its a toss of a coin which one turns up (mosty bad so far), but as soon as Pienaar returns he'll be back to good Humph.

really believe that for Hump to be consistant he needs Pienaar beside him.

we need Court back ASAP for the scrum Afoa as soon as possible as well (think we'll have to wait till after the final though)
Best will need rested but we need him
Muller, Pienaar and Wallace don't really need rested and should be straight back
Danielli and Trimble may need a little rest

I wonder if Muller hadn't been called up would we have lost the last 3 games?

I missed the Treviso game but the result pretty much said it all, last season Pienaar pushed Humphreys hard in terms of kicking duties, I remember a great piece by BBC during one half time about them having a contest every game to see who would kick the penalties. Things like that shouldn't be underestimated it helps keep someone sharp so hopefully that happens again this season.

A big problem seems to be a lack of leadership and someone stepping up and taking control, Henrys ok as captain when its all going right but he seems weak when they are struggling

Kingshu wrote:Don't know why people are giving Hump a hard time, we shouldn't be expecting him to play like last season.

Kingsu, so what you are saying is we should accept less? Come on. What we got last year (in the main) was the guy playing with some consistency. We all know he can perform but its the consistency that we are looking for. For me that is the LEAST we can expect.

Rava wrote:

Kingshu wrote:Don't know why people are giving Hump a hard time, we shouldn't be expecting him to play like last season.

Kingsu, so what you are saying is we should accept less? Come on. What we got last year (in the main) was the guy playing with some consistency. We all know he can perform but its the consistency that we are looking for. For me that is the LEAST we can expect.

For me, we know we can only expect that consistancy with Pienaar beside him. So without Pienaar we know that we aren't going to get that consistancy.

Its like buying a mini and expecting it to do 100mph when you know it won't and then getting upset when it doesn't.
add a turbo charger (pienaar in this analogy) and you can expect it to do 100mph as you know it can now go that fast. Without the turbo charger, Humph will always be inconsistant, and thats what we can expect.

Expectation and acceptance are two distinctly different things.

but you say the consistency is the LEAST we can expect.

While not accepting that without Pienaar we can't expect this, Hump doesn't have it in him to be consistent on his own.
Therefore we have to expect and accept inconsistent performaces from him.

Because we expect less, doesn't save him from being dropped though.

We as fans expect a level of performance from the players. That is why we debate. Sure we expect the odd poor performance from him. It's in his nature. That it was so poor is unacceptable to me anyway.

Management should not accept anything less than consistency (good not poor) and therefore the player should be dropped.
My argument is purely if the poor performances are repeated then he should be replaced.

that he has given poor performances isn't a surprise, but how bad has been.

but no point dropping him now Pienaar is returning, let the two play together again to see does he raise his game up again to last years standard, and if not then think of replaceing him.

OK but if it doesn't work I'll be back here looking for ye

Rava wrote:OK but if it doesn't work I'll be back here looking for ye

What to play out-half instead of Humph, he can't be that bad, its come to me playing!

Careful kingshu. Rava hails from Ballymoney. Which means he holds a grudge in one hand and a baseball bat in the other.

http://www.ulsterrugby.com/news/9739.php

Danielli Pienaar and Muller are back in training this Monday but the Irish players have to 2 more weeks as part of the IRFU Management programme, it gives them less than a weeks training going into the Scarletts game and for guys like Wallace and Court surely they would prefer just get get straight back into training and be 100% for the next game

Yea Trimble is in Dubai according to his twitter!