Ireland v Ulster build up thread

Frank Murphy didn’t want to know about Ulster being offside all night.

Worst Leinster performance in years. Half backs were shocking. Forwards made very little ground and we couldn't string anything together. Well done to Ulster, they capitalised on our messyness

Fair play Ulster. Congrats on the win. Better team for the whole game.

Connors was Leinsters MOTM. Frawley, Henshaw and Furlong were good too. Besides that, very average.

Harry Byrne had a few errors off the bench again. Can’t help but think he’s forcing it at the moment. That said, you can see a bit of pace and willingness to attack the line from him. All a learning experience for him.

Except he did penalize Leinster for it. Twice.

I’ll take your word for it, very poor this season. Hopefully he does develop because at this moment in time Leinster are in a massive trouble at 10 going forward (excluding Johnny)

There were several unforced errors by McGrath and Hb which had nothing to do with the forwards. Forwards didn't help but half backs can't blame all the errors on the forwards

Fair point but Leinster were terrible with ball in hand when we did have it. McGrath was slow and threw a lot of poor passes and Ross is just so predictable that he's completely ineffective. Probably a lot to do with the pressure from Ulster, but we just looked clueless at times. One to forget.

Absolutely this can happen but, as examples, I'm not sure the kicks out on the full can be blamed on the forwards. Crappy ball at the back of rucks, malls, scrums, absolutely but from memory Hb had enough time and space to kick with little to no pressure on him. They were bad mistakes IMHO

McCloskey..😁

Surely the 7-6 Dragons game last month was the worst performance in years?

Every time Leinster lose it's the worst performance ever. It's the modern way to comment!

Hume was excellent tonight. He's a real prospect at 13 going forward.

What game were you watching? Whenever Baloucoune touched the ball against Argentina he looked seriously threatening and always made yards.

Aki is a specialist 12. Hume isn't competing with Aki for a jersey. He's competing with Ringrose and Henshaw. But they're both experienced internationals. Hume is still only 23 and has growth still in him. He's clearly ahead of Farrell and Earls (if you're even calling him a centre)

Hansen has looked good but he's been in the country for a few weeks and has scored a few tries against low level URC fodder. Baloucoune is an Irishman who has come through the system, Farrell has had his eye on for a long time, has been in camps over the last 2 years and scored tries in European games.

National coaches don't pick their squads based on form over 5 rounds of URC. And if they do, they're doing their job wrong.

I'm shocked the IRFU haven't disbanded Ulster already for actually showing up last night

No actual Ulster fan thinks we have a team of world beaters, you're getting upset and putting words in people's mouths. He's saying that two of our best back prospects should pick up some caps - not that they should be starting for Ireland going forward.

You can point out it was a second string side all you want but basically every leinster fan was expecting a relatively straightforward win tonight, due to both your strength in depth and our weak forward pack. You had plenty of internationals in that pack and great bench players, no excuse for getting outplayed by Marcus Rea, Mich Kearney, Andy Warwick, Alan O'Connor and Greg Jones.

Also not sure why you think Hansen is particularly more deserving for caps than Baloucoune, as Baloucoune was already due to pick up caps when he was in the squad a year or two ago before getting a season ending hamstring injury and he's put in great performances in Europe for a couple of years now. I like Hansen and his talent is there to see, not sure why you have to minimise what Baloucoune brings to prop him up.