What a game. Ulster with virtually no supporters in the stadium due to the weather. But when the team travels they know alot of Ulster Rugby Supporters are in rugby clubs roaring them on every step of the way.
Ulstermen in towns and villages across the province who had no rugby to play due to the snow braved the conditions in many cases interupting everything to get to their local club and watch the game.
Everything stopped at 1.30 today to watch the team!
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A team performance, every man stepped up to the plate, total committment, the last few minutes where awesome, but phase after phase crashed the Bath Defence eating up the final seconds and when Nigel Brady & BJ Botha nearly scored from that, what a finish!
Humphreys 6 from 6, Tries from Adam D’arcy & Nevin Spence.
A superb game followed, which had everything. We have just recieved comments from the camp below, and a video clip from the UAFC is below as well as fans from Lisburn Rugby club when the Spence scored!
Ulster Coach Brian McLaughlin had this to say to Sky Sports after his team’s win this afternoon:
“We got great confidence from coming here last year and getting our first win on English soil in the European Cup competition, so from that point of view we came here today with three words, ‘nothing to fear’ and we said that we would go out and do our damdest to keep this competition in our own hands”
“We didn’t play particularly well but we were dogged enough. We again gave away a soft try at the star which put us under pressure but we knew this match was going to be hard, we knew it was going to be physical and we knew they would try to move the ball about a bit more than they did last week.”
“We had to defend with everything we had in the first half but we managed to keep the scoreboard ticking over, keep ourselves alive and I thought we came out and played very well in the second half.”
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Nevin Spence’s try came just towards the end of Butch James’ 10 minutes in the sin bin – important timing said the coach
“Nevin Spence’s try was highly important and to get it at that stage just gave us a little bit of an edge. But they came back at us and all credit to them. We got a penalty which gave us a little bit of breathing space but all credit to Bath, they came back again and scored a smashing try in the corner from Banahan.”
Reluctant to single out anyone, McLaughlin did have a few words to say about Heineken Man of the Match Ian Humphreys;
“Ian played very well today, off the ground his kicking was amazing, 100%, he directed us well, very pleasing.
“The pack was amazing, the leadership of Johann was outstanding and to have someone like Chris Henry who can come off the bench for the last 20-25 minutes gives you a real boost. You can’t pick anyone out, Ian, yes, took his kicks, took his chances but the whole squad was fantastic.”
With a focus on the final two rounds of competition, McLaughlin played down any chat of Ulster reaching the knockout stages just yet;
“We’re not thinking that far ahead yet. We’ve just had a chat in the changing rooms and we’ve done nothing yet, we’ve just stayed in our group and we’ve done what we said we wanted to do by Christmas we said we wanted to make sure we were still alive in Europe with a fighting chance and we wanted to be pushing up towards the top of the Magners League. We’ve done that but we know we can still play better and we still have improvements to make.”
Heineken Man of the Match Ian Humphreys also spoke to Sky Sports after the game, and was asked how important today’s win against Bath was;
“Absolutely massive. We knew if we wanted to progress to the quarter-finals we needed to win today. We didn’t have the best start, I think they scored pretty much off the kick off and like last week we gave ourselves a bit of work to do but fair credit to the players, we managed to dig in there, got a few penalties, get a lead and hold on”.
“Over the last couple of months we have managed to build a confidence that even if we get behind we don’t panic, we stick to what we want to do and work our way back into games. There’s loads of confidence in the squad at the moment and we’re building towards what we hope is a big season.”
“They had a strong team but we performed well and are happy with the result.”
Asked about Ulster’s chances of progressing the the last eight, Humphreys said;
“At Ravenhill we like to think we’re pretty tough to beat so if we can beat Biarritz there, that puts us into the last game against Aironi with our destiny in our own hands and you can’t really ask for more than that.”
Ulster (15-9) Adam D’Arcy; Andrew Trimble, Nevin Spence, Paddy Wallace, Simon Danielli; Ian Humphreys, Ruan Pienaar (1-8) Tom Court, Nigel Brady, BJ Botha, Johann Muller (Captain), Dan Tuohy, Pedrie Wannenburg, Willie Faloon, Robbie Diack
Replacements (16-23) Andi Kyriacou, Paddy McAllister, Bryan Young, Tim Barker, Chris Henry, Paul Marshall, Ian Whitten, Jamie Smith
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