If your lost you can look and you will find us, time after time,
Time after time, time after time …
The Mexicans failed to put in an appearance at the Rosetta yesterday. With the locals waiting their arrival, the tension was palpable as the 4 o’clock deadline approached. The lounge bar resembled the set of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.
Dewi Barnes took a tension relieving smoke outside, The General sat watching the clock and stroking his moustache, and Ithryn, sat with his back to the door his eyes firmly on the chicken and ham pie he was eating, whilst Young Man played with his frog.
Time slipped from 4.30 towards five o’clock and the tension eased, The General prepared to walk to the match before being offered a lift half the way there and a refresher pint of cider, whilst Dewi Barnes resumed normal chat and informed us the Mexican’s buses were delayed somewhere along the A1.
The Irish bus thieves joke sprang to mind when Sean and Paddy, (both Leinster supporters apparently), following a night out, had missed the last bus and couldn’t find a taxi. Neither wanted to walk home so decided to steal a bus. Breaking into the local depot, Paddy was dispatched to get the bus. After waiting for some time Sean went looking for him and found Paddy looking lost.
“I can’t find a no. 92 bus anywhere,” says Paddy.
“Ach sure,” replies Sean, “take a no.32 and we’ll walk from the roundabout!”.
Not too sure if the Leinster supporters walked from Sprucefield roundabout or the Ladas Drive one but they did eventually arrive at about 5.15p.m.
A brisk wind flowed down Ravenhill towards the beer tent as usual with even the obligatory practice kick at goal finding its way over the tent and unto the patio area in front of the tent, scattering a few startled drinkers. There was rain in the air too and as we prepared to take to the terrace it came down in the by now traditional stair rods. Managing to find a decent spot on the Terrace, our little party, of myself obviously, Gillian and Ron the Spark struck up a conversation with what turned out to be members of the BWAC, before the warm up man jacked up the PA volume and terminated any pretence at a conversation. The BWAC, also known as the Ballyclare Wrinklies Athletic Club turned out to be a knowledgeable bunch on rugby matters so it was possible to discuss business end of rugby from a position of strength, knowing that rugby knowledge didn’t stop at the ‘Humph is brill’ end of the debate spectrum.
A big subject of speculation of course was whether Ulster would have to play into or with the wind. This was answered when the teams run unto the pitch, half bent into the wind, with Leinster occupying the Aquinas end of the pitch. As the last bars of ‘stand up’ were borne aloft in the stiff wind, referee Andrew Small of the RFU, opened match proceedings with a shrill blast of his whistle and promptly whistled again as Leinster were penalised for being offside at the kick off. The odd Leinster fan has described the weather conditions as atrocious and one remarked, ‘how do they live up there?’ as if Belfast was closer to the Bering sea than Dublin Bay. Leinster will have surely played a few games in the wind and rain, not the least at Ravenhill in past seasons and won, so there should be no pretence this was a new experience for them or their sombreros. Unlike times past Leinster didn’t play with the wind well and were perhaps a tad fortunate to be up a try at the end of the half. In fact Leinster played better into the wind being able to move the ball from deep with Brian O’Driscoll being the stand out performer here, either half. Ulster though played a good game for the conditions and took some of their chances before disappointingly relaxing enough to let Leinster score at the death and claim a bonus point.
If Ulster were weakened by the resting of Paddy Wallace and the withdrawal of Ferris from the bench it was Leinster who suffered the most from the IRFU policy of resting players, despite having umpteen internationals and Lions on the park and on the bench. Without their first choice half backs Leinster looked less than incisive and indeed the loss of Elsom however promising their back row newcomers are is beginning to look a major blow. On the plus side, (for Leinster) Ulster’s front row resources when BJ Botha is removed also look less than awesome. With BJ off it and CJ (Van Der Linde) on it for Leinster the Ulster pack looked less than secure at scrum time. Nevertheless this was a notable win with Leinster eventually bringing on the remainder of their first choice stars in the shape of Fitzgerald, Sexton and Van Der Linde.
To sum up we were well worth our win and sit at the top of the Magner’s tree as a result. We did not expect to be there, will we be there at the end of the season is for me a moot point. We are a third of a way into the League but as the so called bigger teams wind up and get into the season full throttle it is a cause for debate as to whether our lightweight squad can last the distance. It’s not a sprint and Ulster’s intensity levels must stay high just to survive. Of immediate concern is the scrum and the potential loss of BJ to injury would weaken it dramatically on the evidence of the past two weeks. Elsewhere full back could become a position of concern if Shifty gets injured.
I will not get carried away by this win but things are heading in the right direction as once again Ravenhill rocked last night both on and off the pitch. We are getting back to where we were when Solomons was replaced and somehow I felt that had he remained he might have been able to address the away form concern. This is important because at that time the away record was poor as it is now but we are currently establishing Ravenhill as a fortress once again and seem ready to move on and address the away record.
For now though it is a brief and heady time at the top of the Magners tree whilst others struggle to catch up. Let’s savour it while we can before other teams target us as the team to beat to win the League. I’m reminded of the bull advising the turkey to eat all the sh*t in the field to enable the turkey reach the top of the tree just like the crow. The turkey obliges and proudly sits at the top of the tree, whereupon the farmer spots the turkey and shoots it down.
The old bull remarks, “bullsh*t, can get you to the top of the tree but won’t keep you there!” So that is the first part of Ulster’s objective, get to the top of the tree and remain there. If the foundations of that ascent are shaky then we will be exposed as first class pretenders without the backbone to sustain our lead.
Away from the pitch I believe Neil Francis was once again drowning in his own special brand of Franno soup, a distinctly suspect culinary cocktail which fails the acid test of taste when subjected to the scrutiny of his fellow pundits. It is unfortunate that Francis struggles to elucidate his thoughts which when shred of provincialism can be fairly insightful. It is to his detriment that he cannot separate the provincial tendency from the big picture and it causes him to lapse into parody, a point apparently picked up by his fellow commentators last night.
Where Franno digs holes for himself the Leinster supporter stoically accepts the defeat and continue to enhance their reputation for enjoying themselves despite the relative travails of their team. I chatted to one such chap last night and we exchanged views on the current state of the teams without rancour or serious argument. Their buses had negotiated the roundabouts and where lined up in Mount Merrion awaiting the return of the Mexicans for the journey south. My Leinster friend parted company with me saying he would see me in the RDS, I agreed, looking forward to it already!
Sparky the bear, Ulster’s long standing mascot once again did battle on the pitch with Leinster’s lion in a carefully choreographed series of manoeuvres with both ‘animals wielding flag poles so thin as to look like they couldn’t support a Kojak lollipop let alone a fencing match. Rather disturbingly for Ulster’s younger and more naive supporters, Sparky revealed himself to be more human than bear when he lost his head. For the record yet another of those chaps in the backline got a man of the match award. It seems the old class lines are still much in evidence with the backs known as chaps and the forwards as miners. Still if you saw the after match sartorially dressed Bryan ‘the Bear’ Young you would wonder why they couldn’t be classed as chaps. Anyway I thought one of the forwards should have got MOTM. They were the unsung heroes of last night’s game.
Talking of forwards one would be remiss in not mentioning this column’s adopted player BJ Botha. Anyone who follows BJ’s column in the Africa.com site will note BJ’s general antipathy towards our weather. Fresh from regaling his SA readers with tales of 140kph winds during a match, being unable to drive past Forestside with his windies down and the distinct lack of vitamin ‘D’ due to a nuclear winter hanging over Belfast, BJ was recently complaining about those dark mornings that cause him to put the lights on at 8 a.m. We fixed the vitamin ‘D’ problem with our unparalleled 6 days of sunshine in September and lo and behold those dark mornings will disappear at a stroke as we’ve managed to get the clocks reversed an hour to give BJ a dawn he can appreciate as he rises for training at Newforge. Given that in my opinion BJ is our MVP (most valuable player) nothing is too much trouble if it keeps the great man happy.
As BJ Botha might say, ‘thanks BP.’
On a more serious note, it is with concern, given my background in construction and health & safety, emergency access/egress with regard to fire safety, that I note the Terrace takes an eternity to clear. Heaven forbid, but should Kimble decide to set fire to his hair in protest at Ulster’s performance then emergency evacuation becomes a serious problem. The only quick way to escape the Terrace would be across the pitch after surmounting the pitch side railings. It seems to me that UR need to address this problem by say for example opening a route across the Aquinas end of the pitch towards the back of the stand. I hope UR are looking at this problem before an accident occurs.
Corrections, comments or questions?