Ulster v Leinster passed me by somewhat, like a ship in the night. I was vaguely aware of goings on around me largely due to a visit to my sister’s in the afternoon. The brother in law sometimes has to have the beer bottle prised out of his mits when you first arrive but later as the wine flows he’s all too generous. Add in a few pints at the beer tent and my senses were going as pear shaped as Ulster’s game plan on the pitch. For what it’s worth, Ulster appeared to kick too much, aimlessly and without sufficient precision to ensure it wasn’t returned with interest by a Leinster back three.
At times the match resembled the air over the Israeli, Gaza border, with much to and fro of armaments as represented by a rugby ball which sometimes saw more flight than a low budget Ryanair jet. Add in Leinster’s game around the fringes and it was mainly one way traffic in the second half, with Leinster making territory and possession count in terms of points. Still the aficonado’s on the UAFC board were happy enough with our defence operating fairly well, but the offence…?
Onwards to Thomond. Did you see it coming? I certainly did not and neither did the aficos on the UAFC board. For many Munster fans nestling in Fortress Thomond it was a bit like a bus crashing into your living room whilst you watched your favourite movie.
It was the stuff of nightmares, your favourite team hasn’t been firing on all cylinders for a while. You’ve scraped home in a few games and worse, you travel to Galway with less than a full deck of cards to play with and you get stung. Defeat by bottom of the table Connaught brought a much expected reaction call from the Munster faithful and reaction is what they got. Not from their own team, but the visitors who had lost the previous week at home, were lying 7th in the league and generally were expected to put up a manful performance at max but would dutifully lie down and lose.
The visitors hadn’t won at Thomond since 1995, though to be clear about this, Munster have played most of their Magners/Celtic League games at Musgrave Park in Cork. Still they are the European champs and unbeaten by any Irish province at Thomond since dear knows when. Having treated Ulster not too seriously at Ravenhill, the home team put out a by no means first choice team but certainly one stronger than when the sides met at Ravenhill earlier in the season.
Did you see it coming? Well surprise, surprise, low layeth the fields of Athenry. Just how low was to become apparent during the second half when the expected comeback from the Munsterians failed to appear except for one brief minute or two when Ulster were reduced to the same number of players as a rugby League team and Munster scored a try. Yours truly had written this game off as a loss given that we were understrength through injury and with our first choice hooker on the bench.
Surprise, surprise then when the French/Ulster diplomatic bureau texted shortly into the second half with the shocking news that Ulster were laying waste to Munster to the tune of 22 – 6. Can never find a radio when you want one and after a half hearted look at the UAFC match thread I found myself sitting in the car outside the house in a cool 3 degrees cold. Swathed in clothing with about 20 minutes to go and desperately tuning to MW Radio Ulster. Finally Gusher’s nascent tones echoed round the car. Neilly was already on cloud nine with The Constable trying to keep him earthed with sensible asides.
32 – 11 Ulster it was by now and Neilly was already pondering if he’d had an out of body experience. Still wrapped in Alice in Wonderland mode, Neilly found his voice for the 5th Ulster try. By now he had experienced an experience like no other, nor is he ever likely to, to be fair. The voice agog with excitement he described Marshall’s play as that of a demented ferret. Hardly PC that one when the chap is a little vertically challenged but he could be excused that sort of language when he was witnessing a unique event.
Munster being munstered at their spiritual home? It was left to The Constable to sum up by intoning that every player lives for these sort of games and will take the experience with them long past their playing days, or words to that effect. By now the feet were beginning to clunk, click in the freezing cold with every Gusher consonant. I retired indoors, to find her indoors, who had earlier been alarmed by my frenzy of excitement, had cracked open another bottle of red which I solemnly promised to diminish in celebratory style.
In post mortem mode, disbelief was thick in the air, like gunsmoke from a St. Valentine’s day massacre. Munster fans acknowledged the quality of Ulster play whilst dissecting their own team’s performance and mainly bisecting their team’s management. The name of Mr. Laurie Fisher stood out like Toad in Wind in the Willows. Laurie was the arch villain, coaching all that Munsterism out of the Munster forwards and replacing it with a sort of half baked forward cum backs type of mixture which led to the Munster forwards being stationed on the wings whilst the backs mucked in or was that rucked in their absence.
Over on the UAFC site the old chestnut, Negative – Positive thread had been rendered redundant and revamped as a whiteness and light thread bursting at seams with positivity. The Babbling Brook as the Leinster board is known was now a gushing torrent with posters in danger of drowning in a sea of platitudes. It’s like we used to play when Matt was our coach, ventured one Ladyman, whilst there were lots of well done, hail Mary’s, wish it was us hadda done that. Recriminations are never far away in these games and it wasn’t long before the Munster faithful were being decidedly unfaithful to one another with more bloodletting and spilt milk than a week at the court of Caligula.
Naturally the UAFC board took awhile to get round to it but sure enough we produced our own unique recrimination with a who’s sorry now post by the poster formerly known as Gerry Oh!
Here’s what Gerry had to say:
by Oh Gerry on Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:43 pm
At the start of the season, I pooh-poohed the clampits who wrote off Matt Williams and called for his immediate removal after 3 or 4 games. At the time I said that he should be judged after Christmas when his largely new team has had a chance to settle in.
More inciteful than this site’s very own crystal ball gazer, Mystic Keg, Gerry triumphantly topped off his vindictive reproach with a Kimble blue comment.
What say ye now ?
Tell you what Gerry, your a bum blast of the highest order, get back in your box. As another poster helpfully pointed out he wasn’t saying this last week when Leinster beat us or at least if he had he’d have been laughed out of court. Posts like this remind me why I stay off messageboards nowadays. Indeed another of our famous, for all the wrong reasons posters was on the Munsterfans forum querying why they weren’t back slapping Ulster and Robbie G @ Munsterfans evoked the ghost of T. Brennan with a veiled reference to the behaviour of Ulster supporters at Thomond.
For now Ulster bask in the glory of a sensational result which was acknowledged by most of the Irish media and even Ospreys fans. The next objective is to push on and make this result look like a progression and not another Toulouse 33-3 game which ultimately saw us lose our way and implode spectacularly through the remainder of the season. Williams appears a master of psychology though and one would expect him to bring the players back to solid ground in County Down in no uncertain manner this week. I await the Edinburgh result with some trepidation admittedly, but a win there would see us consolidate our reputation without exactly replicating the Thomond Park manner of victory. For sure the tartan clan will take us seriously unlike Munster.
UNREQUITED WORLD – Update no. 3 on the Cillian & Gillian ‘gone with the wind saga’.
Cillian is taking an enforced rest from rugby due to a fracture in the facial region but not before he had spoken to Hooker magazine. In it he revealed when it came to blondes or brunette, he couldn’t afford to be picky. Bizarrely Gillian has since dyed her hair black!!!
Not content with infiltrating Cillian’s world by the stealth of an approach to a teammate to put a word in for her, Gillian actually got on the pitch Saturday week ago during the halftime break in the Leinster match by playing with the Newforge taggers!!!
A feat Cillian could not achieve though I’m sure he was busting to have a crack at his old team (not the Taggers BTW!) Not content with infiltrating the pitch at Ravenhill I can exclusively reveal Gillian is taking up a coaching role with UB!!!! Cillian your days are numbered, look behind you!!
DECEMBER TEST FOR ULSTER’S ANTIPODEANS
I ruminated previously on the weather welcome element for our southern hemisphere galacticos, when the rain in October and November all but washed them off the Newforge training pitch and into the River Lagan. I can now exclusively reveal to my readership that 2008 has been the coldest since 2001. December I can report was drier, sunnier and er colder than average. Grass frost was recorded on 22 nights and air frost on 16 nights. Still, BJ, big Ed, Robbie, Clinton and Jim must be bearing up rightly despite the whitened look to Newforge most mornings and it doesn’t appear to have had a diverse effect on their game, bar Timoci’s hamstrings feeling a bit peeky.
HOW MANY WHALES sorry RUGBY PLAYERS CAN YOU GET IN A MINI?
Well the answer is, two in the front and two in the back!!
As revealed on this site last week, Andrew Trimble did indeed find his mini parked in the Newforge gym. Rumour has it that Andy’s revenge will be to take 3 colleagues in his mini to the Connaught game. With Cillian in the front seat navigating, it will be left to big Ed. O’D and Carlo to pack down in the back. With their chins stuck between their knees the locks will be rolled into the Sportsground in the foetal position before being untwined by the physio’s after a gruelling 5 hour journey. That’ll teach them not to manoeuvre someone else’s mini!
BERING SEA NO MORE
The everyday tales of ordinary folk on the Bering Sea rolls to a halt as the authorities call time on crab fishing to replenish stocks. Not before a tale with a sting in the tail, about a 48 metre fishing boat listing in heavy seas was brought in harrowing detail to the screen. The 11 crew roped themselves together and leapt for their lives into the freezing waters. Those not wearing survival suits perished quickly and by dawn there were only two left roped together, the narrator of the tale and the ships cook, a 19 year old girl. In early morning a coastguard helicopter flew over the twosome but failed to spot them and shortly thereafter the girl gave up the fight for life.
The narrator however survived over 24 hours in the icy waters before being washed ashore and rescued. He learned aboard the rescue chopper that another crewman survived but his joy at this happy ending vanished when it was revealed the boat had in fact stayed afloat, thus rendering the loss of 9 crew completely wasteful.
Mind those grass frost mornings at Newforge are probably survival suit jobs.
FROZEN YORKIES
Still as one documentary sinks below the radar another one surfaces featuring truck drivers in Canada’s frozen wastes of the far north. During a 60 day slot in winter, when temperatures plunge regularly below minus 30 degrees, rough hewn drivers traverse the frozen lakes carrying equipment to the diamond mines. Known as Ice Road Truckers the programme featured one particular granite jawed driver trucking through the Arctic night across the frozen lakes while singing his particularly gruelling and tuneless version of Amazing Grace.
Any fancy dan Ulster rugby player who gets ahead of himself should find himself sitting beside Alex as he drives through the night singing a well known hymn in tortuous tones. If that doesn’t reduce the fancy dan to a shimmering wreck then he’s either deaf or a complete bar steward.
C’mon ULSTERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Corrections, comments or questions?