NO CAVING IN

Stand up for Darren Cave.

For a man that was frozen out by Declan Kidney, and then seemed to be losing his place in the Ulster squad to Jared Payne, the former Sullivan student has been a revelation this season, and his hat-trick on Saturday against Leicester was no more than he deserved for a phenomenal all-round performance which included some incredible defensive work to go with his smart finishing which saw him draw all the plaudits, and deservedly so.

Although when I say “a revelation this season”, I really mean he’s continuing on his consistent top quality form at outside centre. Cave has been nothing short of a dedicated servant to Ulster Rugby, and one of their best performers season in season out, and it is absolutely fantastic to see him enjoying his rugby still and hitting the heights that he did on Saturday night.

It is beggar’s belief that some people wish for him to be replaced, specifically the blazers down in Dublin who wish for Jared Payne (Ireland’s best full-back in my opinion) to be BOD’s successor, when you see the impact that he is having on Ulster. Cave's defensive ability and organisation is second to none, he is one of the best support runners in the northern hemisphere and the fact that Leicester couldn’t cope with him for the full 80 minutes speaks volumes about his talent.

An Ireland call surely beckons.

Robbie Henshaw played well in the Autumn Internationals and has shown some impressive form for Connacht too so he will be a tough man to displace. But with the form that Cave is in it would be an absolute joke if Schmidt omitted him from the side to face Italy in two weeks’ time, and I am sure the New Zealander is fully aware of that. Arguably Ulster are under-represented in Schmidt’s Six Nations squad, but it would be nothing short of a crime if Cave didn’t make at least the final 23.

It would be just reward for Cave’s form, not just this season but for all of the seasons he was unjustly passed over by Kidney. He has never been given a fair shot at proving he can be the successor to Brian O’Driscoll and when Payne was parachuted into the Ireland team to play Australia ahead of him you were afraid that that was that.

All credit to the centre, he has plugged away and now he should be richly rewarded with a Six Nations berth against Italy. The possibility of a partnership with Robbie Henshaw is a distinct possibility and would feature Ireland’s two in-form centres playing off each other to great effect. It is a duo that I believe Joe Schmidt doesn’t just need to go with, he MUST go with it.

Otherwise we’re not seeing Ireland at their best.

Elsewhere, I’m sure everyone was delighted with the return of Iain Henderson to the Ulster team, and what a return he made. If Saturday happened to be the first rugby match you’d ever watched you’d swear that the baby-faced blindside had been featuring for Ulster all season, not making his long overdue return from hip surgery in pre-season, such was the impact Henderson had on the game. It was if injury was a foreign word to him – he launched himself into every tackle and every ruck with such ferocity that you feared for him every time he was hit.

It is refreshing to see that from a player who has an incredibly bright future for both Ulster and Ireland, and his hard-hitting style coupled with that tenacious breakdown work meant the back rower (and he is a back rower, not a lock) gave Ulster go forward ball they’ve been badly missing. His return comes at a timely moment in Ulster’s season, and should he stay fit for the rest of the year then Ulster have some player on their hands.

Speaking of Henderson, it’s also a good reminder to rugby coaches everywhere that it is crucial to put players in their best positions.

Isn’t it funny how when we play Jared Payne at full-back he suddenly looks like a dangerous player? And that Henderson gets through a heap of work in the back row that he is deprived of when playing lock? It’s no coincidence that whenever we utilise players in their best positions we provide one of our best performances of the season so far, and hopefully this will be a healthy reminder to both Doak and Schmidt that Iain is a flanker and Jared is a full back.

Indeed, Henderson’s use at lock is no longer required. I have been very impressed at how Alan O’Connor has coped with the step up from club rugby to the Pro12 and then to the Champions’ Cup, and should he continue in that vein then there is no reason why he and Dan Tuohy cannot forge a strong partnership for several seasons to come. For a player so young O’Connor is not afraid to shy away from hitting rucks or players and provides something of an intimidating figure in the loose too. A promising few years lie ahead for the Academy man.

O’Connor’s rise shows what young players can do when given the chance. Hopefully more will follow suit.

A CLASS BELOW

Let’s not dodge how good Toulon were on Saturday.

Even with the multitude of international superstars at Bernard Laporte’s disposal and the ramshackle defence they were having to plot their way around, some of the rugby they played simply defied the imagination. Mamuka Gorgodze’s try is one of the best you will see this season, while Martin Castrogiovanni’s score to wrap up the four try bonus point was a beautifully disguised and well worked move that showed the attention to detail that Toulon have.

I read Dewi Morris’ column on Friday before the game where he mentioned that attention to detail and on Saturday he was proved right. While Toulon do have so many great players to mix and match each week, the coaching staff put a lot of pressure on the players to perform, and as a result there is always a desire and a hunger to win that nobody else tends to have. You can say what you want about Mourad Boudjellal’s policy on buying success, but Laporte’s backroom men are just as integral to the trophies at the Felix Mayol.

And to Ulster.

We knew it would be an extremely tall order to win, and so it proved to be, but I’m not sure anybody was quite prepared for how badly we were beaten. Put in the most straightforward way: shipping 60 points to any side, even Toulon, is unacceptable. No matter how many players we were missing due to injuries (ten for those who are counting), you would have hoped we’d put up a better fight than we did.

Eliminate any thoughts of the bonus point, that’s irrelevant. The fact that the Toulon crowd were applauding our tries by the end of the game proves how much they cared that their side had conceded a try bonus point. By the end I’m sure Bernard Laporte couldn’t care less how many tries his side let past them, Toulon were safely into the quarter-finals as pool winners at this point and hadn’t lost any players to injury – as far as the coaches and fans were concerned, when Castrogiovanni crossed for that fourth try, the newspapers flew and the job was done.

Cross to the opposition and Neil Doak could only hold his head in his hands as Louis Ludik, Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding were all taken off the field injured. It brings Ulster’s astronomical injury list up to a painful ten front line players on the sidelines and with only a small handful of players looking like making a return from injury in the next month or so there are serious issues in the physio room back in Belfast.

It furthers many people’s point that the Pro12, specifically the Irish provinces, can no longer be competitive with the money being invested in the Aviva Premiership and the Top14.

When you look at the amount of overseas players that Toulon have, and also Leicester for that matter, it’s a very tall order for the homegrown talent of Ulster to compete. As we saw on Saturday, down ten players, it was impossible for Ulster to compete with the depth of the squad that Toulon had. Juanne Smith goes off? Replace him with Mamuka Gorgodze. Martin Castrogiovanni needs a rest? On comes Carl Hayman. Ali Williams pulls out before the game? Promote French international Romain Taofifenua to the starting line-up.

Ulster lose Chris Henry and the entire province goes into meltdown.

In fairness to Mike McComish he proved everyone wrong and played very well on Saturday, but the issue still remains – none of the Irish provinces have the depth to compete with the Toulons or the Saracens of Europe. Leinster have worrying depth in the second row and in the centre while Munster struggle at scrum-half and the centres. Ulster have problems in the back row and at scrum-half.

How to solve it is another question entirely. Many have called for the NIQ quota (which currently allows each province to have four players who aren’t Irish in their squad) to be lifted to more than four in order for the provinces to be competitive at the highest level, however that’s not necessarily the answer to the question. It didn’t prevent Munster and Leinster being so dominant in the ‘00s and early ‘10s so why should it prevent them now?

Whatever the issue, it’s clear that things need to change in order for Ulster to stand any chance of getting out of their Champions’ Cup in the next few seasons. Yes we got a difficult draw this year, but there’s a chance that we could get a similar pool next season and unless something dramatic changes then you can’t see much improving for 2015/16.

One final thought: what is up with the Toulon pre-game chant?!

MISSING SOMETHING

How many other teams do you think could manage to score three tries in 26 minutes and then fail to score again for the next 54?

And we’re not talking about another try, we’re talking about any points AT ALL.

Only Ulster could manage that, and nearly throw the game away in the process. Indeed, had Michele Campagnaro held onto that last minute interception then I would be talking about another away defeat for the Ulstermen instead of a win. Yet, unsurprisingly, Sunday’s result feels remarkably like a loss than a win – and considering how hard we tried to lose the game in the second half, I’m actually rather surprised that I’m not writing about a loss today.

What baffles me completely is how we played scintillating rugby that tore Treviso apart in the first half, and survived ten minutes without Craig Gilroy without conceding a point, and in the second half we looked like a poor imitation of that side. We seemed to rest on our laurels and believe that the game was won, and rather than cruise to the bonus point that seemed like a formality, we regressed into the team that put in those limp performances against the Scarlets and the Ospreys.

For some reason we decided that the best way to get our fourth try was not to continue with the running game that was posing Treviso so many problems, but instead to resort back to the futile kicking game that has failed us for the past two months. As I said a few weeks ago, the kicking game can work, but only when you have the right players for it. Without Andrew Trimble, who will chase every kick, we cannot employ the kicking game successfully.

It’s such a shame after the Leinster game where we ran the ball very well, and the first half in Italy where we were making yards on a regular basis, that we couldn’t understand that this was a tactic that needed stuck with.  If we had picked up in the second half where we left off in the first half with our running game then the bonus point would have been a case of when rather than if. Instead, our tactics failed us once more.

We can’t even use the excuse of Treviso improving, because they didn’t. We simply gave them a route back into the game and they very happily took it, scoring 20 unanswered points and giving us a real scare – again, had Campagnaro held onto that intercept with less than a minute left on the clock we were going back to Belfast with just a point. But that does not mean they were good, no. Rather they preyed on our inability to put the game to bed and when they got their chances to score points they gave the ball to the reliable Jayden Hayward who slotted over his kicks without any hassle.

For the first time since he became a pundit, and a very good one at that, I found myself disagreeing with Paddy Wallace’s judgement that the positives outweighed the negatives at the final whistle. Not for the first game this season there have been a lot of questions raised about this Ulster outfit, namely can they compete in the league this season. Being two points off the top four hides the real story – several disappointing results and a tragic European campaign that will more than likely see us finish bottom of our pool.

How you can argue the positives outweigh the negatives is beyond me. Yes, we played some irresistible rugby for the first half an hour with Pienaar and Jackson pulling the strings like master puppeteers, but after that we switched off completely. There was no intensity to wrap up the bonus point, there was no urgency or desperation and as a result we paid for it. Had we got one more try before half-time then it would’ve been job done, haul off the big names and head home with five points in the bag.

We now head into two dead rubber matches against Toulon and Leicester knowing that we are playing for pride alone, and we will probably see a much changed side head to the Stade Felix Mayol as we look to conserve a few front line names. Whatever the results, as long as we come through unscathed and with no injury worries heading into the Six Nations then we will have traversed the Champions’ Cup minefield relatively successfully.

Sadly, that’s all we’re playing for now.

ON THE SLIDE

As the sun set behind the Grandstand at the RDS, so set the sun on another dismal performance for Ulster.

That is their fourth loss in their last six games. Yes, that is a whopping 33% win rate in all competitions since the 28^th November, and those two wins both came at home. Meanwhile we have lost on the road to Munster, the Scarlets, the Ospreys and now Leinster all in the space of six weeks. For a side that has aspirations to be in the top four come the end of the season and to be competing at the highest level, that is a shockingly poor statistic.

Dress it up any way you like it, there has been an incredible decline in performances since November. The loss on the road to the Ospreys, as well as our hosts played, was nothing short of embarrassing, while on Saturday afternoon there was a considerable lack of clinical finishing from all involved. How Ulster didn’t manage to cross the whitewash in the first half at least once is anybody’s guess and that inability marks another flaw in the Ulster machine.

It also means Ulster now slip out of the top four and into fifth place. While the gap between us and the Ospreys in first is only five points, it’s still preferable to be on the inside looking out than on the outside looking in. And don’t forget the threat of Connacht lurking in sixth – make no doubt about it, Pat Lam would like nothing more than to finish the season without the moniker of being Ireland’s fourth province, and on their current form that’s a real possibility.

What did make me wonder was whether Ulster’s best chance at silverware has now passed them.

It’s a question that’s been bandied about quite a lot this season, what with the loss of Johann Muller and John Afoa, as well as the retirements of Paddy Wallace and Stephen Ferris, and it is also a very relevant question too. Last season, as we all know, Ulster looked nailed on to go a long way in the Heineken Cup (especially after the win in Leicester), yet fate intervened as it cruelly does and snatched away a potential final appearance with Jared Payne’s red card.

Whether we could have outmuscled the might of Toulon and their global superstars in the final is another matter entirely, but not one we have to address. It still doesn’t take away from the fact that with one of the best 23s that Ulster have ever managed to assemble, we still fell short at the crucial moments – as much as Saracens was down to a combination of bad luck and bad judgement, our defeat to Leinster at the RDS in May was most certainly our own downfall.

In fact, the way we lost then isn’t much different to how we lost on Saturday. We started the game with confidence and panache, seizing the early initiative and going on an early offensive. Yet for all our dominance in the first half, back in May we only led by nine at the break, and on Saturday we found ourselves three down with a man in the bin. In both games the away side should have been standing on the horizon giving a victory salute to the sorry hosts far behind in the distance at half-time, yet both times a lack of clinical finishing and consistency meant there would be no victory salute at the final whistle.

The problem is, we are now looking at a team that gives you the sense that there will be no light (silverware) at the end of the tunnel (season). In previous seasons there was the real belief that with John Afoa shoring up the scrum, Johann Muller providing excellent leadership and David Humphreys scouting far and wide for potential signatures to the Ulster cause there would be reason to celebrate next year. It was a strong team, a settled team, and one that had finally shaken off the underdog tag that plagued the province for years on end.

Then in one fell swoop we lost all three.

Afoa announced that once his regular trips to New Zealand ended, he would make one more – across the pond to Gloucester, never to return. Later, Humphreys would follow him, for reasons still unknown, leaving a gaping vacancy at the head of the province. Finally, Captain Fantastic hung up his boots after an illustrious career that he can be proud of, and we cannot begrudge him that – the man bled for Ulster. Suddenly, a settled side looked rocked by the loss of three anchors with a glaring weakness at tighthead prop, director of rugby and, most importantly, captain.

What we have now is not the same quality. Wiehahn Herbst, even though he actually makes regular appearances for us, does not possess the same ball carrying prowess that Afoa did, Les Kiss won’t be with us until after the World Cup has ended in September of this year, and there still seems to be an absence of somebody who will grab a game by the scruff of the neck and motivate the players into action like Muller did.

Also quite worrying is the fact that our “worldwide search” for a head coach extended to our backroom staff. No harm to Neil Doak at all, who I am confident will flourish in the role with Kiss back at the helm, but when we needed a big name to walk in and take control, we instead decided to fill the position with a man on the inside with no head coach experience.

Mark Anscombe had to go, I’m not questioning that, but with the money that we now had from the departures of Messrs Afoa and Humphreys we could afford to splash out on a big name like Jake White. Instead, we elected to elevate Doak to the role of head honcho, a man who is familiar with the squad but has never been the main man at a team before, let alone one who are aiming to win trophies. Whether that proves to be the right decision is yet to be discovered.

It draws me to the conclusion that we are now facing a difficult period in our development.

Speaking to a member of the senior team a couple of weeks ago, he stated to me that they are being told repeatedly that this is indeed a transition year at the Kingspan Stadium, and while I understand that there are some chinks in the armour that need repaired, a side of Ulster’s quality should not be needing a season of transition. Yet apparently that is what we are facing right now with very little results as of yet.

We still possess the backbone of the side that could have reached the Heineken Cup final last season, and they should be good enough to start picking up points. Instead, we are looking at an outfit who have now lost six away games on the bounce (including a loss at Zebre), only picking up a losing bonus point in three of them. In the meantime, we have gifted Munster and Leinster four points each and the Ospreys five as they pull away from us in the Pro12. While we may not be out of the hunt for the play-offs yet, it isn’t exactly a great confidence booster that we have been humbled by three play-off rivals in the last six weeks.

Has our best chance at winning a trophy already passed us by? Probably.

Right now our first team cannot compete with the likes of Toulon and Clermont, and until we can provide some decent depth in the back row then we’ll be struggling domestically too. Granted, I am willing to give Neil Doak some time to work with the players and at least gain something of a rapport with Les Kiss when he comes back, but unless the results can begin to improve, starting with this week’s visit to Treviso, then there is the distinct possibility he might not even get the chance.

Positive: At least we started running the ball more on Saturday.