Le mémo de la 4e journée de Top 14

My midfielders would be

12 J. Barrett, Tavatavanawai, Tupaea

13 Proctor, Ioane

Hopefully qld and RA can work together despite this.

However, the URC is never going to prepare the Springboks for the skill and speed of playing the All Blacks and Australia either.

The Springboks who won in 2019 and 2023 were overwhelming players who were brought through the Springboks during the Super Rugby days. We will see in 2027 (or maybe 2031) when the new generation of Springboks who have only played in the URC whether they are as prepared as the previous Springbok generations.

URC surely has not prepared Ireland, Scotland, or Wales to win any World Cups.

Then again, maybe ike is on the money (for once!) and it would fall flat on its arse. Anyway, as it stands it doesn’t look like we’ll get to find out!

It's brilliant to watch but it does seem to be its own brand of rugby, somewhere inbetween union and league. Some of it even looks like a higher intensity 7’s.

Always interesting to see how it feeds into the ABs in what will be a huge second season for Razors.

What were you expecting from Hotham, a mere 22 year old playing his first finals?

Look back at previously successful Ulster teams and they had great coaches with deep squads full of quality overseas players.

Up to 2006 they had Alan Solomons and Mak McCall coaching them, during the revival after 2012 they had David Humphreys as DoR and a very deep squad featuring NZers like John Afoa and Jared Payne, and Saffers like Muller, Wannenberg and Pienaar.

Just looking at their centres they had quality operators like Darren Cave, Luke Marshall, Ian Whitten [who had such a successful career at Exeter], Chris Farrell and Stuart Olding. That’s a very deep group.

If a club has already enjoyed two major cycles of success in the pro era they have the infrastructure to do it again.

Atm their squad only has two non-international overseas players in it [Werner Kok and Juarno Augustus] and their coaching looks to be a notch down on what it was. That change has nothing to do with junior pathways so better coaching and signings ought to be the priority.

Absolutely believe SL would have been highly sought after, he’s a world class coach and I’d expect him to have his pick of some top opportunities. No surprise in that whatsoever but I wouldn’t expect someone like him, if he had chosen a gig like Ulster to be personally implementing the schools/youth/academy initiatives. I would on the other hand expect him to be all over it like a rash to make sure that others were in place to drive it, unless ofc you’re going to tell me that he pays no attention whatsoever to these aspects and doesn’t see them as having any value?

Now ike says it’s not going to work because there isn’t enough interest in sport participation around Belfast and across Ulster, and where there is interest, GAA has an unbreakable stronghold over them. He could be correct, I don’t know if he is or he isn’t but my point is why would they not try?

The bottom line is Ulster Rugby have gone from the highest levels and leading the way in Ireland to a pretty dire position near the bottom of the pile. And there hasn’t been anything from you guys on how they should be approaching this other than just accept it’s too difficult.