Ulster
suffered another away defeat, this time
against an under strength Ospreys side, and Ulster are in
danger of negating the positive benefits from the improved
performances against the Dragons and the Scarlets.
A sprightly
young Matt McCullough in his wonderful Ballymena Academy days - hey!!
As with Munster last week, Ulster hung
in there in the first half but proceeded to fall apart in
the second. The defensive system was too easy to unlock
and this coupled with poor first up tackling left gaping
holes in midfield which the Ospreys were able to exploit
at will. The sight of Caldwell and Harrison in the middle
of the park flapping at the Ospreys attackers brought this
into sharp relief.
Niall O'Connor had a difficult game, but
no worse than "The Humph" has had in the past
(particularly away from home) and better than the likes
of Hook and Stephen Jones had managed during their early
visits to Ravenhill. Some of the comments about O'Connor's
performance from some message board posters say's more about
their lack of understanding of the game than it says about
O'Connor. If O'Connor continues to progress as he has this
season he should be there or there about with the national
side next season.
With the exception of Bowe, Ulster showed
little in attack and when the forwards were constantly rebuffed
on the Ospreys line during the first ten minutes there was
a feeling that our main attacking outlet had been blunted.
This was the case and unfortunately as the forwards continued
to huff and puff during the match they never looked like
breaking through the Ospreys defence.
So are we back to square one after the
two wins at Ravenhill? We'll only know on 11th against Connacht
but this Williams strategy of using the away games for development
may come back to haunt him. Any momentum Ulster had built
up with the change of Management is in danger of being lost
and the size and nature of the defeats (two of the worst
ever in the Magners League) may have shattered the already
fragile confidence of the players.
However with two weeks to go before the
eight pointer at Ravers The FRU are confident that the defensive
issues will be addressed and the passion of the home crowd
should see our boys through.
The FRU Man
of the Match goes to Matt
McCullough who struggled manfully against the tide
in the second half.
~
~ ~ ~
~ ~
Weekend Of
Woe.
Ulster
rugby weren't the only ones to have problems
this weekend. The FRU had more than their fair share. On
Sunday we were prompted to do an upgrade on our blog, and
as you may have noticed things didn't go entirely to plan.
We like to try and put the site together
after lunch, only this time when we went onto our blog space
to put in The Panther results we were prompted to download
and install an upgrade. Half an hour later we found that
we couldn't log on to the blog as we'd done something wrong
during the upgrade. At this point, rather like Ulster on
Friday we decided to review our game plan and actually started
to read the upgrade instructions. We quickly scanned through
and thought we had pinpointed where we went wrong and made
the necessary changes. Unfortunately we just made things
worse as, like Ulster, we proceeded to fall apart in the
second half. If we had just stopped in the first half and
listened to someone who knew what they were talking about
we would have returned to basics and sorted the issue without
an embarrassing loss of data.
However we decided to go for the miracle
ball and our pass was intercepted and all our blog posts
disappeared into the internet. By this time afternoon had
moved into evening and the dog had scampered to his safe
space in the downstairs toilet. Things were getting desperate
and there was only one thing to do. I opened a bottle of
red and sent my son out to get a packet of Hamlet miniature
cigars and contacted my online support.
It was a tense two hours as we swapped
emails and worked on restoring the site and messed about
with SQL databases (whatever the hell they are) but around
10:30 I had to call it a night as I'd a 5:30 start on Monday.
The next morning I rushed into work booted
up and low and behold the blog was back (well most of it)
. We'll tidy it up over the next day or two and then all
will be back to normal!
The moral of the
story - when times get hard revert to basics and use your
support.
Now, not everything was a total disaster
over the weekend as we managed to sneak along to the Ulster
Rugby Kit sale and picked up quite a few bargains for myself
and my friends acquaintances. Can't wait until the
Connacht game until we can model our new purchases.
~
~ ~ ~
~ ~
Rugby
on TV
Friday
4th April
19:30 Sale v Brive Challenge Cup Quarter-final Sky Sports
2 (from 19:30)
Saturday 5th April
07:30 Hurricanes v Sharks Super 14 Sky Sports Xtra (07:30-10:00)
10:00 Waratahs v Blues Super 14 Sky Sports Xtra (10:00-12:30)
14:30 London Irish v Perpignan Heineken Cup Quarter-final
Sky Sports 2 (14:30-17:00) Sky Sports HD2 (14:30-17:00)
17:00 Gloucester v Munster Heineken Cup Quarter-final Sky
Sports 2 (17:00-19:30) Sky Sports HD2 (17:00-19:30)
17:30 Aberavon v Ebbw Vale Konica Minolta Cup Quarter-final
S4C (17:10-19:25)
19:30 Newcastle v Castres Challenge Cup Quarter-final Sky
Sports 2 (19:30-22:00) Sky Sports HD2 (19:30-22:00)
Sunday 6th April
12:00 Saracens v Ospreys Heineken Cup Quarter-final Sky
Sports 2 (12:00-14:30)Sky Sports HD2 (12:00-14:30)
14:30 Toulouse v Cardiff Heineken Cup Quarter-final Sky
Sports 2 (14:30-17:00)
Friday 11th April
18:30 Ulster v Connacht Magners League Setanta Ireland (18:00-20:30)
19:10 Cardiff v Llanelli Magners League BBC2 Wales BBC Interactive
20:00 Glasgow v Edinburgh Magners League Setanta Sports
2 (19:20-21:30)
Saturday 12th April
06:30 Crusaders v Lions Super 14 Sky Sports 3 (06:30-08:30)
08:30 Blues v Brumbies Super 14 Sky Sports 3 (08:30-10:30)
12:30 Gloucester v Saracens Guinness Premiership Sky Sports
2 (12:30-14:30) Sky Sports HD2 (12:30-14:30)
15:00 TBC Samsung Nations Cup British Eurosport 2 (15:00-16:45)
18:30 Leinster v Munster Magners League Setanta Sports 2
(18:15-20:45) Setanta Ireland (18:00-20:30)
Week
29
Heineken Cup Weekend 4th April
2008
Saturday 5th April 2008
Gloucester v Munster, 17:30
London Irish v Perpignan, 15:00
Sunday 6th April 2008
Saracens v Ospreys, 12:30
Toulouse v Cardiff Blues, 15:00
Predictions
to be in by 2:00 pm Saturday 5th April 2008.