Alan Quinlan: Players perform best when there is stability rather than constant chopping:
“I thought Ulster would be better than this. It was arguable going into the start of the European season that they were actually the best placed Irish team to do well.
They had a few injuries but nothing like what Leinster have had to contend with. They have a tough enough group but you wouldn’t say it’s significantly tougher than Munster’s surely. But here they are, not even into November yet, and they’re as good as gone from the tournament.
Against Glasgow in the Pro-12 the week before the Leicester game, they looked full of confidence. They looked sharp and sure of themselves, like a team who knew what they were about and what they wanted to do.
But in the two Champions Cup games so far, they’ve been making the sort of mistakes that get made by teams who are low on ideas.
Against Leicester in the first game, they had the same sort of non-performance in the first half as Munster and Leinster had that weekend. The difference was that they left themselves too much to do whereas the other pair got out of the jam.
They worked out what was needed and turned the game their way. When the pressure came on, they didn’t really look like they knew what they were trying to do.
It looks to me like somewhere along the way, Ulster have taken their eye off the ball when it comes to the playing side of things. You walk into Ravenhill now and it’s a better stadium to what it was even just five years ago.
You talk to people in the crowd and there’s no doubt they’ve spread the word further out into other parts of the province and have got new supporters and are growing the game. These are all good, worthwhile things for them to be doing.
But through all that time, Ulster have been going through coaches like an English soccer club. Brian McLaughlin, Mark Anscombe, Neil Doak, Les Kiss. By this time next year, they will have had four different head coaches in just over three years
I know the official name for Kiss’s job next year is Director of Rugby but in reality he is going to be a hands-on coach, the man the players have to impress above all others.
This has all been handled so badly. It goes right back to when they got rid of McLaughlin at the end of 2012, a season in which he took them to the Heineken Cup final……………. for the full article which absolutely is 100% spot on go to :- http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/ulster-paying-the-price-for-making-a-mess-of-its-coaching-situation-1.1979769
