Ulster vs Zebre

Ulster Rugby


15 Ricky Andrew
14 Andrew Trimble
13 Darren Cave
12 Luke Marshall
11 Craig Gilroy
10 Ian Humphreys
9 Paul Marshall

1 Andrew Warwick
2 Rory Best (c)
3 Wiehahn Herbst
4 Lewis Stevenson
5 Dan Tuohy
6 Robbie Diack
7 Chris Henry
8 Nick Williams

Replacements

16 Rob Herring
17 Ruaidhrí Murphy
18 Bronson Ross
19 Franco van der Merwe
20 Roger Wilson
21 Michael Heaney
22 Stuart Olding
23 Louis Ludik

Zebre Rugby


15 Hendrik Daniller
14 David Odiete*
13 Giulio Bisegni
12 Gonzalo Garcia (cap)
11 Giulio Toniolatti
10 Kelly Haimona
9 Brendon Leonard

8 Andries Van Schalkwyk
7 Filippo Cristiano
6 Mauro Bergamasco
5 George Biagi
4 Andries Ferreira
3 Dario Chistolini
2 Andrea Manici*
1 Andrea De Marchi

Replacements

16 Oliviero Fabiani
17 Andrea Lovotti*
18 Luciano Leibson
19 Valerio Bernabò
21 Quintin Geldenhuys
21 Samuela Vunisa
22 Guglielmo Palazzani
23 Edoardo Padovani

Kingspan Stadium Ravenhill, Kick off 7.35pm

Live on BBC Northern Ireland

Referee: Leighton Hodges (WRU, 42nd competition game)
Assistant Referees: Peter Fitzgibbon, John Carvill (both IRFU)
Citing Commissioner: Eugene Ryan (IRFU)
TMO: Marshall Kilgore (IRFU)

Ulster are missing Jared Payne and Iain Henderson to hip injuries- though Payne will be fit long before Henderson, who is recovering from surgery- and our team selection has put some very big hitters on the bench. Wilson, van der Merwe, Ludik and Olding will all offer significant impact in the second half. As we could well be chasing the bonus point it's perhaps slightly disappointing to see our best attacker in Olding not starting, but he'll have considerable impact when he comes on.

Ahead of our fist home game Ulster have taken the laudable step of publishing a set of values spectators are expected to adhere to. They've also created an e-mail address that can be used to report offenders and send feedback as well- all strong steps towards making sure that the rugby traditions of mutual respect are maintained at Ravenhill.

Ulster Rugby Values wrote:We are passionate in our support of the Ulster team.
We are silent during kicks at goal by both teams.
We respect the match officials’ decisions.
We drink responsibly.
We are mindful of our language, especially when there are children and young people near us.
We do not tolerate sectarian, homophobic or derogatory language.
We respect the opposition players, supporters, management and officials.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport/rugby/ulster-rugby/home-comfort-for-ulster-against-zebre-will-get-paul-marshall-ready-to-fire-30577950.html

Really hope we see Ulster bring out the same quality of attacking play we saw in Llanelli and tighter defence... last year we only scraped by Zebre twice with poor performances in low-scoring games. I want another try bonus point! And I think it's there to be taken...

I will be pregnant with rage if we don't perform to the best of our abilities and come away with a bonus point win. The squad hopefully will go out there at the Ravespan brimming with confidence, assured in the knowledge they are a large rugby step above the Zebre side.

I'm more than pleased to see the Ulster Rugby values being made known to the more recent fans. I'm not sure about the responsible drinking bit though, unless of course it's referring to being careful to not spill your pint

Would like to see Scholes instead of Allen this week.
He looks to have way more potential... Allen looks a journeyman

toml wrote:Would like to see Scholes instead of Allen this week.
He looks to have way more potential... Allen looks a journeyman

I think we'll be seeing Gilroy and Trimble on the wings this week Tom! Short wait to see if I'm right. Gilroy is still looking short on confidence for me. I don't know why that should be. When he burst onto the scene he looked like an absolutely lethal finisher. When he dazzled against Argentina people were prematurely comparing his style of play to Shane Williams.

Last week he butchered a try by running into the goal post. All he had to do was dot it down on the base. He just isn't where he should be and its hard to put your finger on why. He's been in a protracted funk for a while now.

Zebre team is up. Ulster soon to follow.

would probably rather have scholes instead of gilroy...

Gilroy looked better on his debut-


On the point of Ian Humphreys being a liability - he is probably at schools cup level defensively, but in attack he is excellent at unlocking defences. Could have used him last year in the semi, along with keeping Payne at FB

He's definitely gone backwards tom. Has all that instinctive ability been coached out of him? He looks like he's second guessing himself out there.

Maybe its all psychological... overthinking.
Time for the sports psychologist

http://www.ulsterrugby.com/News/LatestNews/TabId/149/ArtMID/793/ArticleID/1805/Best-returns-as-captain-for-Zebre-clash.aspx

Team up, some surprises as Olding and Ludik drop to the bench- along with Wilson and van der Merwe. We want to see more of Olding, so slightly disappointing, but its a long old season.

Olding may come on at 10


15-9): R Andrew; A Trimble, D Cave, L Marshall, C Gilroy; I Humphreys, P Marshall;
(1-8): A Warwick, R Best (c), W Herbst, L Stevenson, D Tuohy, R Diack, C Henry, N Williams;
Replacements (16-23): R Herring, R Murphy, B Ross, F van der Merwe, R Wilson, M Heaney, S Olding, L Ludik.

We look thin up front...
Who is back up 6? Who is back up 7?
We dearly need some youth to come through there. Joyce has been a slow burner

I would have said this game would have been the perfect opportunity to blood someone new in the back row. These four guys are not going to be in every match day squad- especially if they are flogged early on.

I've really enjoyed watching Ludik and think he brings a massive amount but I really hope we're not sitting at the end of the season saying 'Maybe we should have signed another back row and kept Payne at fullback'

Payne was unimpressive at centre again last week and its hard not to recall some of the brilliance he displayed at 15 in the last two seasons.

toml wrote:We look thin up front...
Who is back up 6? Who is back up 7?
We dearly need some youth to come through there. Joyce has been a slow burner

Wilson played 6 last season at times so he would seem to cover 6 and 8 but looks like Henry will play the full 80 barring injury

I'd say Rory Wilson to cover 6 and 8, Diack would move over to 7 if need be.

Can understand some players being on the bench,
F van der Merwe and L Ludik will play a lot of rugby for Ulster this season, so maybe best torest them here.

we'll need them for the games build up to Europe to have them in form, and in the European games like the Irish internationals, and we'll need them when the internationals are away, so realistically the only games we do get a chance to rest them are the times when the internationals are returnong but just before the 2 games building up to Europe, like this one.

Ulster must be really stuffed at 7 to be playing Henry again, this should have been a game for one of the wannabee opensides. If they can't be trusted to play in this game it's only a matter of time before Henry gets injured and Ulster's season comes to a grinding halt.

The rest of the team is good though -
Warwick deserves a start
Murphy to get match fit
Best to be eased in with the new front row
BRoss finally fit
Experienced locks together
Van the man off the bench
Williams against his old side
(In!)Consistency of Marsh and Humph
Back five know each other against a tricky defence
Olding to cover 10/12 - gets a rest and impress
Louis, great guy to bring on if needed - the number of positions he can cover is frankly Ludikulous

Could be we're overreacting re. Henry. They are bedding in a number of completely new players in the tight five and they might feel that they want some continuity of selection up front. Once the new boys are all integrated in the tight five we might see some more rotation.

Bear in mind as well that Sean Reidy seemed to be the designated back-up 7 in pre-season and then got himself injured against Leinster. So he'll be back in the next week or two. I do think that Henry will be rotated out of the team at some point, our coaches are hardly blind to the importance of not flogging him to death. It's pretty obvious we need to develop depth there.

Zebre can make for a bruising encounter but that starting pack should be enough to soften them up in the first half making room for replacements at 40-60 mins in. Olding an Ludik will cut a tired Zebre defence to pieces.
It should be that simple but Zebre have become a different beast, not so different that we can't expect to win by a country mile though. It has to be a TBP win if we're not to have squeaky bum time at the business end of the season. Every point counts when the race for a top four finish comes down to the finest margins.

SUFTUM....no mercy lads!!!!!!!

So close!

Well done big Nick!

7v7

Rory held in a ruck by Marco. Naughty naughty!!

Cave off.

7v10

Still 7v10.

Missed pen by iHumph!

Try Gilroy!

14 v 10

Try Diack!

19 v 10

Try Trimble!

26 v 10

Try Touhy!

31 v 10

Full of errors at crucial times here so lots to do but with 5 tries scored its not bad at all

In the end a bonus point win where we showed plenty of promise in attack, lots of combinations coming together and lots of errors where we butchered about 4 tries so not too bad really if it starts to come together. 8 points from first 2 games, I'll take that

It was almost like a pre-season game I thought!

As you say, happy with the points and the newbies and oldbies are looking good.

Louis Ludik had another outstanding game.  He was the most low key of the new South African signings but has been the most impressive thus far.  Van der Merwe and Herbst have been good as well, but I've been delighted with Ludik's performances, how on earth was he playing at Pro D2 level.

Yeah defo was MrsP I guess all we can say is for a fair few of those guys it was the first game of the season at least from the start and a lot of changes from last week so I guess I kind of expected the mistakes still with all the mistakes we have scored tries freely in the last 2 weeks which has to be a positive for us

Creating opportunities is good but we have been doing that for a while. I suppose we are still only converting the same percentage of our chances it's just we are creating more?

Still, other opposition will be less generous.

Artful_Dodger wrote:Louis Ludik had another outstanding game.  He was the most low key of the new South African signings but has been the most impressive thus far.  Van der Merwe and Herbst have been good as well, but I've been delighted with Ludik's performances, how on earth was he playing at Pro D2 level.

He was the marquee signing for Agen when they were a Top14 club on their way down. That he didn't try and do a Xavier Rush and weasel out of the deal when they got relegated speaks highly of him I suppose. They announced the signing after they were relegated I think, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had signed on before that was confirmed.

It's very strange because people were maybe thinking 'how good is he if he was coming from a ProD2 club?' Well the answer is pretty good. When he was at the Sharks he was a regular at Super Rugby level and at one time he wasn't a million miles away from breaking into the wider Springboks squad. He's a very useful player who I feel will thrive at Ulster.

Notch wrote:

Artful_Dodger wrote:Louis Ludik had another outstanding game.  He was the most low key of the new South African signings but has been the most impressive thus far.  Van der Merwe and Herbst have been good as well, but I've been delighted with Ludik's performances, how on earth was he playing at Pro D2 level.

He was the marquee signing for Agen when they were a Top14 club on their way down. That he didn't try and do a Xavier Rush and weasel out of the deal when they got relegated speaks highly of him I suppose. They announced the signing after they were relegated I think, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had signed on before that was confirmed.

It's very strange because people were maybe thinking 'how good is he if he was coming from a ProD2 club?' Well the answer is pretty good. When he was at the Sharks he was a regular at Super Rugby level and at one time he wasn't a million miles away from breaking into the wider Springboks squad. He's a very useful player who I feel will thrive at Ulster.

If he keeps up like this hes gonna be very hard to leave out of the big games in Europe. I'm thinking both he and Payne might be in the backline, something like....

15 - Ludik
14 - Bowe
13 - Payne
12 - Olding/Marshall
11 - Trimble
10 - Jackson
9 - Pienaar

Would like to see if tried anyway.

Artful_Dodger wrote:
If he keeps up like this hes gonna be very hard to leave out of the big games in Europe.  I'm thinking both he and Payne might be in the backline, something like....

15 - Ludik
14 - Bowe
13 - Payne
12 - Olding/Marshall
11 - Trimble
10 - Jackson
9 - Pienaar

Would like to see if tried anyway.

Think Ludik looked better at 13 than Payne, just a shame we didn't see more of Cave

Ricky Andrew looks a better player than last season as his decision making seems to have improved.

What was with Andrew's Yellow? I thought Payne was naughty because he stayed on the ground. Apparantly now, even if you jump, you still may not be 'competing'. How are the refs deciding if they are or not? Andrew jumped, had the basket out, the zebre player jumped higher. Who did what wrong? I give up.

clivemcl wrote:What was with Andrew's Yellow? I thought Payne was naughty because he stayed on the ground. Apparantly now, even if you jump, you still may not be 'competing'. How are the refs deciding if they are or not? Andrew jumped, had the basket out, the zebre player jumped higher. Who did what wrong? I give up.

Very frustrating. 50/50 challenge for the ball in the air. His only intention was clearly to compete for the ball. A yellow card... crazy.

Ricky Andrew I thought had a very good game.

The ref and the TMO said Andrew made no attempt to compete for the ball.

I have to say it was not a very convincing attempt to compete from the angles shown.

Notch. I seem to remember someone saying at the time of the announcement of his signing that Ludik was a lot better than everyone else thought. That was you , wasn't it? Boy did you call that one right!

It might have been me. I think he is very good, I always did. My concern when we signed Ludik was not that he wasn't a good signing- I think he is a very good signing- it was that we have a lot of depth in the back line already and no depth in the back row!

So that lack of depth in the back row might come back to haunt us. Apparently Sean Reidy has caught the eye in pre-season though, unfortunate he just picked up a knock against Leinster.

Afraid Pienaar just carried off in SA-NZ game with what looks like bad knee injury

In fairness Andrew turned his back on the ball and only jumped late, he was not careful with what he did at all I would say it was probs a deserved yellow not that it held us back last night anyways.
Seen the Pienaar injury hopefully it won't be too bad looked serious enough but hopefully he won't miss much time for us

brennomac wrote:Afraid Pienaar just carried off in SA-NZ game with what looks like bad knee injury

I can't see us getting the results we need in Europe if we don't have a few key players and he's one of them. There is too much of a gulf between him and any player we might replace him with. Same situation at out half, back row and lock. First choice XV can beat these big beasts we are in with. Our best team can live with anyone but we will be very hard up to get results if you replace Pienaar with Paul Marshall, Paddy Jackson with Ian Humphreys, Chris Henry with Sean Reidy, Wiehahn Herbst with Declan Fitzpatrick or Bronson Ross or Dan Tuohy or Franco van der Merwe with Lewis Stevenson.

I'm not feeling very optimistic about our chances in Europe this year and if Pienaar is out of it, even less so.

Back to this game. What an entertaining, frenetic game. The pace of the game was unbelievable and we were very gung-ho. My biggest criticism would be there was not much structure or control from Ulster at times and I remain pretty unconvinced by this halfback combo. But a very open and entertaining game. Was pretty disappointed with how we defended in the first 15-20 minutes. Took us that long to get started defensively. Still lots of work to do on defence.

I did thoroughly enjoy this game, it was a great game of rugby to watch with both teams determined to attack and play at a high tempo, but I'm concerned at some frailties you could see other, better teams could exploit. Like our line outs being too easily read and picked off on several occasions. Zebre also made years in their phase play rather too easily. Toulon, with their host of massive ball carriers, would be licking their lips if they were watching us trying to defend the likes of Samuel Vunisa who had a very impressive game for the visitors.

By the way... the stadium announcer and the guy who puts the names of the players up on the big screen have one job. Get players names right. Who is 'Rory Murphy'? Is he any relative of our new signing Ruaidhrí Murphy? Because the previous spelling of his name was used on the big screen pre-game and the announcer called him Rory all night. Not the first time they've gotten a players name wrong on the big screen. Seriously, how hard is it to get someones name right? Everything else on match night is so slickly organised now apart from that. It's a bit embarrassing.

That is annoying alright if they can't get our own players names right what chance do they have with the away players.

Is that the announcer's fault?

Firstly, if that was the spelling he was given then that was what he had to say.
Secondly, the pronunciation of the 2 is actually pretty similar when heard with a Belfast accent over a tannoy.

You say Rory I say Ruaidhrí, lets call the whole thing off...

I was pleased enough with Ulster's performance last night, they didn't exactly look like they were intending to hit top gear but still got the job well and truely done.
The Andrew yellow was IMO worse than the Payne red last season so he was lucky to get just the 10 minutes. He made no attempt what so ever to go for the ball and barely jumped. Had Leonard milked it more it could well have been a red.
Humphreys looks like he's added something to his game winning us 2 penalties at rucks. WOW
It's a shame Cave had to go off as he looked damn good in his all too short cameo.

Anyway, 8 points from 2 games is a fine start to the campaign so lets hope we can keep building momentum.

MrsP wrote:Is that the announcer's fault?

Firstly, if that was the spelling he was given then that was what he had to say.
Secondly, the pronunciation of the 2 is actually pretty similar when heard with a Belfast accent over a tannoy.

No, I know Belfast accents. The sound Ru and the sound Ro are not too similar, they are quite distinct vowel sounds. Ru-ree is very hard to confuse with Ro-ree. We don't get confused by people talking about Ro-An Pienaar! The two names don't really sound that alike. Sure they are both two syllable names beginning with R but Ruaidhrí has that very hard and distinctive 'U' sound which is hard to mistake. He just got the name wrong.

Anyway, if you're mispronouncing a name do 30 seconds of research on google to get information on how to pronounce it right. And if you are doing the big screen again- literally takes about 30 seconds in this day and age to google a player to get the right spelling of their name. Last season we had 'Nial Annett' amongst other mistakes- thats just bad spelling. It's just very, very lazy because its such an easy thing to get right.

Notch wrote:

MrsP wrote:Is that the announcer's fault?

Firstly, if that was the spelling he was given then that was what he had to say.
Secondly, the pronunciation of the 2 is actually pretty similar when heard with a Belfast accent over a tannoy.

No, I know Belfast accents. The sound Ru and the sound Ro are not too similar, they are quite distinct vowel sounds. Ru-ree is very hard to confuse with Ro-ree. We don't get confused by people talking about Ro-An Pienaar! The two names don't really sound that alike. Sure they are both two syllable names beginning with R but Ruaidhrí has that very hard and distinctive 'U' sound which is hard to mistake. He just got the name wrong.

Anyway, if you're mispronouncing a name do 30 seconds of research on google to get information on how to pronounce it right. And if you are doing the big screen again- literally takes about 30 seconds in this day and age to google a player to get the right spelling of their name. Last season we had 'Nial Annett' amongst other mistakes- thats just bad spelling

Nah! You only know the gentrified North Down accent!!

MrsP wrote:

Notch wrote:

MrsP wrote:Is that the announcer's fault?

Firstly, if that was the spelling he was given then that was what he had to say.
Secondly, the pronunciation of the 2 is actually pretty similar when heard with a Belfast accent over a tannoy.

No, I know Belfast accents. The sound Ru and the sound Ro are not too similar, they are quite distinct vowel sounds. Ru-ree is very hard to confuse with Ro-ree. We don't get confused by people talking about Ro-An Pienaar! The two names don't really sound that alike. Sure they are both two syllable names beginning with R but Ruaidhrí has that very hard and distinctive 'U' sound which is hard to mistake. He just got the name wrong.

Anyway, if you're mispronouncing a name do 30 seconds of research on google to get information on how to pronounce it right. And if you are doing the big screen again- literally takes about 30 seconds in this day and age to google a player to get the right spelling of their name. Last season we had 'Nial Annett' amongst other mistakes- thats just bad spelling

Nah! You only know the gentrified North Down accent!!

None of my family are from North Down. My mum's family background is working class East Belfast and my Dads is middle class East Belfast. If you want to hear a Belfast accent with rocks in you should talk to my Gran