Tomorrow Belongs To Us

These are the days of endless summer,

These are the days the time is now,

There is no past, there is only future,

There’s only here, there’s only now.

I suppose given the way Ulster have crept under the stealth radar it is important to remember these simply written, but wise words.  Well alright, apart from the line about endless summer, which I’m sure this column’s adopted player, BJ Botha would have something to say about!

Mind, much has been written about UR this week, much of it of a complementary nature. With the likes of ‘Food for Thought for Kidney’ from the Southern Press by way of sharp contrast from what was in print a few weeks back, it all points to the fickleness of human nature as exemplified by the media. Where one looks for a consistent thread, one finds only the disharmony of mood swings ranging from hero to zero, good to bad, rotten to nice.

Where do you start?  Tomorrow is not one of those ‘days like these’ or ‘these are the days’ type games, no, tomorrow I see as part of a journey for Ulster in terms of their rugby development and in terms of proving that 3 games in a row, a consistency of sorts, is not also a little flash in a far bigger pan than we ever realised. Tomorrow isn’t a defining game, nor are, Edinburgh the team to define our season but it is an important stepping stone to breeding a winning mindset, especially away from home.

Edinburgh have it in them to slow the game down and put pressure on parts of our game that are integral to how we go forward. The Edinburgh coach talked about the record against us as counting for nothing but one suspects that is merely coach speak and he genuinely believes his team are very capable of beating us as per their winning record of recent times. They are, but only if we turn up in timid mood or in a mood of wanting to repeat the Ravenhill game by attempting to go all out in attack for at least a sustainable 60 minutes.  Edinburgh will be expecting that and will hope to disrupt. We must maintain the basics of recent games by establishing a platform up front to allow our backs to play. Let’s hope McGlocks et al remember the ‘here and now’ and don’t get carried away by the hype. I’m fairly sure they won’t and hopefully they’ll convey that to the players.

Some of Edinburgh’s press has been of the ‘searching for morsels of belief’ type such as, we are scoring tries in every game whereas last season we went 4 games without a try. This is a very unconvincing, papering over of the cracks statement which neatly subjugates the fact they conceded a hatful of tries. It’s this kind of blinkered language Ulster and its supporters must avoid using.

Where Edinburgh supporters conclude that whilst we, (Ulster) only played Connaught, the Scarlets and Bath, they played the O’s, Stade and Leinster. On paper this looks excellent, in broad daylight it looks a tad imaginative in that they played a barely half strength Leinster team, put out a half strength team of their own against the O’s and played Stade whose reputation neatly hides not a great start to the season.  Edinburgh lost all three, two of them heavily.

Where I to sum up Ulster’s season so far, somewhat dispassionately I would conclude that yes we had convincing victories over a poor Scarlets and Connaught team and a mediocre Bath team. We beat a badly disorganised Ospreys team in Swansea and lost to a useful Dragons team through application of poor tactics and then were beaten by a Edinburgh team on a winning run since last season in the Magners but who were on borrowed time and used a get out of jail free card.

Our season so far has been more hit than miss but lose tomorrow and we could be talking an inconsistent team who shine 60% of the time but retreat to the shadows when under intense pressure. Tomorrow will define whether we have the bottle, the nous and the plain bloody mindedness to go and scratch out a win whilst maintaining our self belief.  Let us hope that at last our away nemesis is put to bed and that we can at least look forward to the visit of a misfiring Leinster team Saturday week.  We do have the components of a good team and right now those components are neatly knitting together as units and forming a cohesive team.  Somewhere down the line loss of form or injury will mean fiddling about with those components to keep the machine working.  Hopefully we will have decent back up.  I think we do have that competition for places.

For now it’s wait and see what happens, let’s hope and believe it’s a positive result tomorrow which will kick on our season to borrow a cliché. For all those travelling over, bon voyage, let’s hear from you and from those of us who remain rooted to the homeland, tomorrow belongs to us.  Speed bonnie boys like a bird on the wing over the sea to Murrayfield,

Best wishes to the Ulster team and travelling support.

As BJ Botha might say, we’re not just back in the game, we’re here to win!