The UAFC

As noted elsewhere Herring and Murphy available for this one.

By all accounts Edinburgh shot themselves in the foot against Ospreys. Cockerill won't accept back to back performances of that calibre and his team know it. I expect a very tight game. Hopefully we can edge it.

Edinburgh will bring a good bit of physicality but our pack has plenty of dog this season. I like how we went after their lineout as well and even had a breakdown presence.

We have to be more penetrating in attack. Also a bit more linespeed in defence. The defensive line looked a bit ropey at times but when you have a few debutants it will take time to gel.

Edinburgh will be another level up, Hamish Watson will have a field day at the breakdown.

Be in no doubt we squeaked home against a scarlets side with something like 16+ injuries. Ulster did look improved but I fear standard across the board is a hole new level up compared to last year. Need to start capitalising of all these line breaks and offloads.

Dave wrote:
We have to be more penetrating in attack.

Definitely this. Lots of action with little penetration last Saturday. Hope Addison is fit as he looked the most likely to make something happen

Well hopefully the officials won’t turn a blind eye to offside. Either that or we get some streetwise savvy and push the laws to breaking point like other kuntz

Eggs wrote:

Dave wrote:
We have to be more penetrating in attack.

Definitely this. Lots of action with little penetration last Saturday. Hope Addison is fit as he looked the most likely to make something happen

Speight also looked capable of exploiting a gap.

Billy didn't get many gaps but he is always looking and seems willing to have a go.
Most disappointing last week was when they went down to 14 in the last 10 mins, then had a player on the ground injured, and we still couldn't convert a massive overlap.

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Oh dear, we are a bunch of negative nancys.

LOOK .......... pay attention to the following:

1) We had a backline that barely know each other
2) Three on debut
3) there were good signs, particularly in the first half .......... but admittedly no pay off
4) If you want to be positive, defensively, a new backline managed to restricted the best backline in Europe to a single try

I saw a good bit of Ospreys & Embra, I saw nothing that was worrying.

Embra will be just as tough a game but I see no reason not to expect Ulster to up things with a little of the rust shaken off in match one. However, Nordi will be playing and that my dears will improve the breakdown for starters.

We are not brill, we will not win the league, but we will win a lot of games at home, It should not be forgotten that a team of raw recruits and the few ould hands still fit scored a TBP win on Embras own lawn just 4 months or so ago.

Reasons to be fearful ............. ....beats me.

Round 2 but a big game in the context of the conference.

Bungling it last year was costly.

Pre-season predictions regarding Edinburgh were a little surprising though.

Can they handle the expectation?

Could be a start for the Admiral at 15 if Will is out?

RUSS INBOUND
No jokes though
Bringing the missus so all need to be on your best behaviour

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Russ wrote:RUSS INBOUND
No jokes though
Bringing the missus so all need to be on your best behaviour

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

Top shagger

Stuart Berry from South Africa is the ref on Friday night.

Neill_M wrote:Stuart Berry from South Africa is the ref on Friday night.

He's decent, usually.

Did the final last year and only pinged us 5 times when we beat Glasgow.

He should be afforded a warm welcome.

Dave wrote:

Eggs wrote:

Dave wrote:
We have to be more penetrating in attack.

Definitely this. Lots of action with little penetration last Saturday. Hope Addison is fit as he looked the most likely to make something happen

Speight also looked capable of exploiting a gap.

Exploiting gaps isn't your problem; creating the gaps is.
You need to stretch defences more, so that not only will a gap appear, but you are able to attack it in a structured way; not just an individual squeezing through and hoping someone is on his shoulder for the hail Mary offload.