Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

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Rooster
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Re: Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

Post by Rooster »

Beattiespastie wrote:. I don't know what they do differently at BLackrock but their side was huge and made our lads look like schoolboys playing men. Our boys gave a great account of themselves and the skill sets were on a par with BLackrock but size and conditioning was different level.
Older as you say plus dedicated rugby coaches in some of those private schools, they are treated and fed like professionals from early in their school life, wonder long term though is it good for the kids ?
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Re: Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

Post by sus5 »

"Where did it say that it was a poor Connacht side ? What evidence have you. Their website said that they should have beaten Munster, yet you " fear for them ". Apparently they lost 2 forwards after 14 minutes and another one after 20 mts, including two props. That would suggest that they have done ok. No team gets a cheap victory in Galway at any level nowadays. After the pummeling they took against Leinster, I congratulate them on this result."

You are missing the point here.....why should we not be able to expect the title....our schools rugby is strong but something goes wrong between the school sides and the representation step. Surely that is evident with results last year and the jury is still out on this years efforts ?
Beating Connacht was good but lets not think that is enough....are we hoping for stars of the future or will we just buy them in ?
I think there is some over representation due to coaches loyalty and also some under representation.
Why not have coaches who are totally independent and objective no matter what school you go to.
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Re: Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

Post by kingofthehill »

Rooster wrote:
Beattiespastie wrote:. I don't know what they do differently at BLackrock but their side was huge and made our lads look like schoolboys playing men. Our boys gave a great account of themselves and the skill sets were on a par with BLackrock but size and conditioning was different level.
Older as you say plus dedicated rugby coaches in some of those private schools, they are treated and fed like professionals from early in their school life, wonder long term though is it good for the kids ?

As far as I remember Clongowes had a guy would would provide video analysis at every age group.

Blackrock have a wealth of coaches who are employed just to coach like Tony Smeeth who coaches Trinty (think he worked with EOS).

The 6 months difference is massive especially at Junior level but that isn't an excuse when it comes to Ulster u18 and u19 obviously.

Boarding at blackrock makes a huge difference and with alot of boys coming through from Willowpark (blackrock prep) together the boys know each other well.

Alot of those schools will offer scholarships like CCB two years ago. Jason Harris Wright was poached by Blackrock in upper sixth from Bray College.
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Re: Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

Post by RuPi »

They also employ S & C coaches where as alot of schools up here have to rely on the boys maybe arriving in to school early and doing the weights themselves rather than having individual programmes. I know of a secondary school in Dublin who had all the boys entering first year functionally screened and given a programme. This school has an S & C coach who takes all conditioning and leaves the on pitch work to the coaches.
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Re: Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

Post by rumncoke »

Boarding schools tend to hit above their weight mainly because the boys are more focused sport is a 6- 7 day thing rather than twice a week and is so starting Sept and ending in April. Coaches don''t have to motivate they build upon an existing base which starts in first form and increases as the boys progress through the school feeding on an expectation generated year after year.
Numericially Campbell should never be able to compete with Inst and Methody but the school is always competitive .
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Re: Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

Post by jamsodonnell »

Ulster Schools Under 18 finished their competitive season on Saturday with a close 17-15 win over Munster Schools.
They beat Lancashire Schools 35-5, Languedoc U 18's 24-10, Connacht Schools 23-0 and lost 68-5 to Leinster Schools. Despite the immensity of the defeat by Leinster, I suppose this is a significantly better return than last year when they lost all their Interpro games. Add to this, the Under 20's winning their Championship and we have the beginnings of a resurgence in Underage performance. Whilst Messrs Clarke and McGlocks are only relatively recently appointed, they will not take all the credit for this.Some structures are beginning to come to fruition although we must be well behind Leinster at Under 18 schools and Clubs.
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Re: Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

Post by big mervyn »

rumncoke wrote: Numericially Campbell should never be able to compete with Inst and Methody
Campbell isn't that far behind numerically - Inst has just over 1050 boys; Campbell has 950: MCB has 1810 students but less than 50% of those are boys. Source: BELB 2012 enrolment figures.

Pretty much even-stevens really although you could argue that Methody is the school punching slightly above it's weight.
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Re: Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

Post by RuPi »

jamsodonnell wrote:Ulster Schools Under 18 finished their competitive season on Saturday with a close 17-15 win over Munster Schools.
They beat Lancashire Schools 35-5, Languedoc U 18's 24-10, Connacht Schools 23-0 and lost 68-5 to Leinster Schools. Despite the immensity of the defeat by Leinster, I suppose this is a significantly better return than last year when they lost all their Interpro games. Add to this, the Under 20's winning their Championship and we have the beginnings of a resurgence in Underage performance. Whilst Messrs Clarke and McGlocks are only relatively recently appointed, they will not take all the credit for this.Some structures are beginning to come to fruition although we must be well behind Leinster at Under 18 schools and Clubs.
Everyone is way behind Leinster with regards to the time and resources they are able to put into their under age programmes.
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Re: Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

Post by Beattiespastie »

Well said Big Mervyn....Methody is comparative numbers wise with its Belfast rivals and does not enjoy a numerical advantage despite having a large school population. I would argue the playing pool is pretty even across the board with RBAI,Campbell etc...
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Re: Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

Post by Setanta »

Mind you, unless things have changed a lot, some of our lassies could punch pretty hard as well !!
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Re: Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

Post by Kofi Annan »

kingofthehill wrote:
Rooster wrote:
Beattiespastie wrote:. I don't know what they do differently at BLackrock but their side was huge and made our lads look like schoolboys playing men. Our boys gave a great account of themselves and the skill sets were on a par with BLackrock but size and conditioning was different level.
Older as you say plus dedicated rugby coaches in some of those private schools, they are treated and fed like professionals from early in their school life, wonder long term though is it good for the kids ?

As far as I remember Clongowes had a guy would would provide video analysis at every age group.

Blackrock have a wealth of coaches who are employed just to coach like Tony Smeeth who coaches Trinty (think he worked with EOS).

The 6 months difference is massive especially at Junior level but that isn't an excuse when it comes to Ulster u18 and u19 obviously.

Boarding at blackrock makes a huge difference and with alot of boys coming through from Willowpark (blackrock prep) together the boys know each other well.

Alot of those schools will offer scholarships like CCB two years ago. Jason Harris Wright was poached by Blackrock in upper sixth from Bray College.
King, are we Ulster closing the gap at all, what do you think? At school level if more coaches started to sing from the same hymn sheet and had the development of players as the number one priority surely we could produce a lot more players that may make the Academy. Rupi I agree on the S&c thing just saw a weights programme for a particular school and to be honest, it concerns me that a child is asked to do it un supervised , no record nor monitoring appears to be required!. ulster may now be going in the right direction but it will be 2-3 years really before we see the difference.
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Re: Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

Post by kingofthehill »

Kofi Annan wrote:
kingofthehill wrote:
Rooster wrote:
Beattiespastie wrote:. I don't know what they do differently at BLackrock but their side was huge and made our lads look like schoolboys playing men. Our boys gave a great account of themselves and the skill sets were on a par with BLackrock but size and conditioning was different level.
Older as you say plus dedicated rugby coaches in some of those private schools, they are treated and fed like professionals from early in their school life, wonder long term though is it good for the kids ?

As far as I remember Clongowes had a guy would would provide video analysis at every age group.

Blackrock have a wealth of coaches who are employed just to coach like Tony Smeeth who coaches Trinty (think he worked with EOS).

The 6 months difference is massive especially at Junior level but that isn't an excuse when it comes to Ulster u18 and u19 obviously.

Boarding at blackrock makes a huge difference and with alot of boys coming through from Willowpark (blackrock prep) together the boys know each other well.

Alot of those schools will offer scholarships like CCB two years ago. Jason Harris Wright was poached by Blackrock in upper sixth from Bray College.
King, are we Ulster closing the gap at all, what do you think? At school level if more coaches started to sing from the same hymn sheet and had the development of players as the number one priority surely we could produce a lot more players that may make the Academy. Rupi I agree on the S&c thing just saw a weights programme for a particular school and to be honest, it concerns me that a child is asked to do it un supervised , no record nor monitoring appears to be required!. ulster may now be going in the right direction but it will be 2-3 years really before we see the difference.
I don't know if we are. Obviously there is big changes within the academy to help oversee everything with McGlock and Clarke but like you said its not going to happen overnight.

The schools are so important to developing players and from my experience a lot of the big schools train as much as Ulster do (3 weights sessions before school,3 after schools sessions,lunch time line outs and backline sessions,video analysis etc.).

Now with that in mind I can hear you say 'why aren't more players coming through then?'

I have thought about this, Is what being coached helping to develop a players all round game or is it helping the school win another Cup by a simple game plan ingrained into them from an early age (generally ball up the jumper,low risk rugby wins games)??

There are some cracking players coming through the system at the minute like Conor Shiels (Jonnys younger brother) , Rory Bell , Mark Best etc... It will be interesting to see if these guys make the step up in the near future with the new academy set up.

Think there was a stat that only 30% of players that went into the Ulster Academy went on to play for Ulster which was the lowest of all the Academies.

In 4/5 years hopefully that number will increase and we can say that the new structure is working.
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Re: Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

Post by RuPi »

There has been massive changes in the last few years and I agree with Kofi we can only judge the latest changes in 3 years time, we have had a better underage inter pro series and hopefully that will be reflected when the pre Christmas training squads are announced. This is the first year that the U20's have basically trained every day like professionals and whilst it was a massive ask for the boys taking part especially those travelling from further away, it had certainly paid off. I know there was complications over the 19's and they were late getting started but they have been more competitive than they where as an 18's age group. The 18's got hammered by Leinster but everybody did and they won their other 2 matches, I know McGlocks has added a new dimension of professionalism to all the age grade squads and this can only help further down the line.
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Re: Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

Post by gannonman »

Anyone know what Aaron Kennedy is like? He is an incredibly talented cricketer.
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Re: Ulster Schools 2012-2013.

Post by kingofthehill »

gannonman wrote:Anyone know what Aaron Kennedy is like? He is an incredibly talented cricketer.
What school does he go to?
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