Fast and furious against the fat boys!

If you’ve been asleep for the last week you may have missed that Ulster won their “Game of the Decade II” to immediately qualify for “Game of the Decade III” a Heineken Cup quarter final against the roly poly English side and perennial underachievers Northampton Saints.

A harsh assessment of the Aviva Premiership pace setters, but like all sides in that “over inflated” league ?I tend to regard all their teams as being a bit chunky so pumped and inflated are their players with their over reliance on the physical aspect of the game.

Joking aside, Northampton are a good team with good players but the quality of the league they play in is the key factor that gives Ulster their slim chance of winning this game as Ulster should be something different to the type of teams that they face week in week out in the porkers premiership.

Over the next ten weeks Northampton will be going through the same biff, bash, bosh of the premiership whereas Ulster can and should use the more relaxed and refined atmosphere of the Magners League to fine tune their match strategy.

The down side is that Ulsters strategy is a strategy that does need changing as they won’t be able to rely on the pack to get them out of trouble as they have done in the Heineken Cup to date. While the pack have performed well, the match against Leinster showed us all that we’re far from the finished article and, Northampton aren’t going to let us walk all over them as Aironi did.

Ulster need to start developing their back play and hopefully we’ll see the likes of Luke Marshall and Craig Gilroy slip into the Heineken Cup squad and Darren Cave return from injury. Three players that give us real competition and real options that have been lacking in our back play to date, but more importantly three players that can fit into the fast paced counter attacking game plan that Ulster need to develop if they are to stand a chance against the English behemoths.

Not suggesting that they slip straight into the starting line up but they give the present incumbents real competition and more importantly they give the management a degree of comfort in the seamless quality they can rely on to execute the game plan.

Ulster also need to decide on their back row combination and it’ll be no surprise to regular readers that Ferris, Faloon and Diack would be my match winning pick. Harsh on Wannenburg but we cannot continue to ride our luck with the expectation that the injury prone Ferris is going to be constantly available for the big games and he and Wannenburg need to be rotated at six.

It puts a lot of pressure on Faloon and Diack but they are the players Ulster have to go with if they want to speed the service to the backs – we’ll get a good indication of the type of game Ulster are looking to play when we see the back row selections over the next six games.

Ulster have six fixtures between now and the Quarter Final , Northampton have 11.

Just in case you’ve missed the details:

HEINEKEN CUP QUARTER-FINALS
(All Kick-Offs LOCAL Time)

SATURDAY, 9 APRIL 2011
16.30 Perpignan v Toulon – Olympic Stadium, Barcelona (55,000) – FR2
18.00 Leinster v Leicester Tigers – Aviva Stadium, Dublin (51,000) – Sky Sports

SUNDAY, 10 APRIL 2011
14.00 Northampton Saints v Ulster Rugby – stadium:mk, Milton Keynes (21,500) – Sky Sports
17.30 Biarritz Olympique v Toulouse – Estadio Anoeta, San Sebastian (32,000) – FR2

SEMI-FINALS
Leinster or Leicester Tigers v Biarritz Olympique or Toulouse
Northampton Saints or Ulster Rugby v Perpignan or Toulon
30 APRIL / 1 MAY, 2011

16th HEINEKEN CUP FINAL
SATURDAY, 21 MAY, 2011 – MILLENNIUM STADIUM, CARDIFF (kick-off 17.00)

Ticket Information

Ulster will be taking their full allocation of tickets for the Heineken Cup quarter-final match against Northampton Saints at stadium:mk which will be played on Sunday 10th April, 2pm.

Tickets will go on sale w/c 21st February 2011 with full details of pricing to follow

1) Tickets will be made available initially to 2010-11 Season Ticket Holders who will have the option to purchase one ticket per season ticket held, for a limited period

2) At the end of the season ticket period, members of the URSC for 2010-11, who have not already taken up their allocation through the season ticket channel, will have the option to purchase one ticket per membership held for a limited period. Note this applies only to those who were registered as URSC Members before 22nd Jan 2011.

3) Following this, any remaining quarter-final tickets will be made available for purchase to those buying a 2011-12 Ulster Rugby Season Ticket.* Details of season ticket prices will be released shortly.

*For avoidance of doubt, this applies only to those who are not current ie. 10-11 Season Ticket Holders