Last week we were sitting pretty after one round of Pro12 action –
five points bagged and second place in the table looked very nice, while the
performance against the Ospreys was good enough to take some accolades too.
Neil Doak would have undoubtedly been delighted every time he stepped onto the
training field this week and you wouldn’t have blamed him if he had a spring in
his step and a glint in his eye.
Then we went to Wales.
Let’s not try and kid ourselves – Ulster were poor. The fact that we
were unable to defeat a team who were down to 14 men for half an hour of that
game is a horrendous one to analyse in the cold light of day and shows how we
struggled to really make any sort of an impact on the game. The Scarlets did
have a decent game, let’s not deny them that, but at the same time we didn’t
exactly make life too difficult for them either.
Now let’s not get ahead of ourselves either. After all we are only two
games into the season and given our opening two fixtures I’m sure most fans
would happily have taken five points from them before the season began, so it’s
not exactly time to panic just yet. Besides, the Parc y Scarlets has become one
of the more difficult away venues to win at too – any win would have been an
impressive performance.
So how about we just take a step back and remain calm. There are still
20 games left in the season to change things around and a lot of rugby to be
played and a lot of players to return to the province before the year is out.
Stuart McCloskey is still dominant in the centre, the driving maul looks
destructive and we have Treviso up next so not everything is going against us.
Even contrast our start to our likely play-off rivals. Scarlets and
Munster lead the way having both taken victories from their opening two games,
Leinster and Glasgow sit alongside us on five points from their two games,
while the Ospreys have been stunned in two damaging defeats and sit a lowly
eleventh with just a solitary point to their name and no tries to speak of. By
comparison, we haven’t done too badly.
Instead we can now turn our focus to the long-awaited start to the
2015 Rugby World Cup!
Time seems to have gone in slow motion since the warm-ups started but
now we’re finally into the meat of things and Friday night heralds the beginning
of rugby union’s showpiece at Twickenham between England and Fiji, and for the
next month and a half people who have never even heard of rugby suddenly become
the biggest fans in the world.
The All Blacks are, of course, the favourites for the Webb Ellis
Trophy as per usual, however their usual ability to mess it up on the biggest
stage will always factor in and could allow either the Springboks or the
Wallabies in behind them. Still, they do have the ability to win the World Cup (as displayed in 1987 and last time out in 2011) and it will take a monumental display from another side to take them down.
Of the Northern Hemisphere sides Ireland look best placed to mount a
challenge to the All Blacks, however on home soil you’d back England to have a
strong run at the trophy too. Wales’ hopes probably died with the losses of
Leigh Halfpenny and Rhys Webb, and France, although strong when it counts, are
still far too inconsistent to be any sort of a threat to the sides from Down
Under.
Ireland need a big start against Canada to get the momentum back in
their favour. Back-to-back defeats to Wales and England, while not overly
detrimental, were not ideal and Joe Schmidt will be eager to get his side back
in a winning mindset ahead of the big games against Italy and France. If they
can get on a roll by the time they take on Phillippe Saint-Andre’s men in the
final pool match then it will take an impressive performance to stop them.
So prepare yourselves to watch the best in rugby battle it out to be
the top dogs in the world! Will the All Blacks batter their opponents black and
blue? Will the Springboks sprint past their rivals? Will the Wallabies find a
scrum good enough to overcome the odds? Or can a northern hemisphere side shock
the rugby community and keep the Webb Ellis this side of the equator?
Get ready to find out!
Elsewhere
- I feel so sorry for poor Connacht – it’s not often you score four
tries in a match and still end up on the wrong side of the scoreline. Still,
it’s their own fault for giving Glasgow a 24-point head start because whenever
you do that you are asking for trouble. Glasgow, meanwhile, are looking rather
frail.
- The juggernauts at Toulouse have finally been taken down by lowly
Pau. Despite not being overly impressive in their performances, Toulouse were
unbeaten in three Top14 games before ex-Munsterman James Coughlan led Pau to a
gritty 9-6 win, a result that many in France were predicting was only a matter
of time. Toulouse are in Ulster’s Champions’ Cup pool.
- With the announcement that Richie McCaw will be delaying his
decision on retirement until after the World Cup, there’s no doubt Mourad
Boudjellal will be getting his chequebook out and licking his lips. There’s
every chance McCaw would be lured to a short stint in Europe to finish his
career, and a big money move to Toulon would be ideal. He’d have to be a dope
to go anywhere else…
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