Ulster Rugby today confirmed that Mark Anscombe has been appointed as Head Coach from season 2012-13 on a two year contract.<\/p>\n
Mark has just finished a three year term as Head Coach of the Auckland ITM Cup side and has combined that role with a number of positions in the very successful NZ U20 squad. Last year, Mark was Head Coach as they again triumphed in the Junior World Championships in Italy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been a long and detailed process but we\u2019re now delighted to confirm that Mark will be joining us next season.\u201d commented Ulster\u2019s Director of Rugby David Humphreys.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all believe that he has the experience, ability and knowledge to build on the success of the last 2 years.<\/p>\n
We were all very impressed with Mark during the interview process, he know what it takes to get the best out of players and has an in-depth understanding of the game. He has strong leadership qualities and will challenge both the players and staff in ways some of them haven\u2019t been challenged before.<\/p>\n
As well as an experienced Head Coach, he is a high quality technical forwards coach with a proven track record of delivering competitive, physical forward packs. He will be instrumental in developing some of the young forwards already in our system to ensure they become key players for both Ulster and Ireland.”<\/p>\n
Mark Anscombe commented;<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been keeping an eye on Ulster for a while now and I\u2019m very impressed with the plans and what\u2019s happening at Ulster Rugby and I\u2019ve very excited about the prospect at being involved in that.<\/p>\n
It goes without saying that the job will present me with an exciting challenge. Ulster have been developing over the past few years, they\u2019ve had some new players come in to strengthen the squad so the foundations are there but there\u2019s a lot of work to be done in terms of moving on to the next stage and that will be a challenge for me and for all of us.”<\/p>\n
Anscombe is familiar with both John Afoa and Jared Payne who he has worked with at Auckland;<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re both good men with a lot to offer. In the short time that John has been at Ulster he\u2019s already impressed the rugby public there. Jared was very unfortunate with the Achilles injury but I\u2019m sure if he had remained fit they would have been singing his praises also. <\/p>\n
David (Humphreys) has recruited well so far, he\u2019s brought in quality people and I\u2019m looking forward to working with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anscombe (54), who is married with three children, will arrive in Belfast on 1st June.<\/p>\n
Ends:\/\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ulster Rugby today confirmed that Mark Anscombe has been appointed as Head Coach from season 2012-13 on a two year contract. Mark has just finished a three year term as Head Coach of the Auckland ITM Cup side and has combined that role with a number of positions in the very successful NZ U20 squad. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9205,5768,4592,6077,5809,4693,3959,1997],"class_list":["post-23370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ulster-rugby","tag-anscombe","tag-appointed","tag-coach","tag-head","tag-mark","tag-new","tag-rugby","tag-ulster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23371,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23370\/revisions\/23371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}