We might not be so lucky if we leave it that close again, admits Reidy
smoke-screen the issues, which again included several scoring chances being wastefully butchered, and all have been pointed out to the group by a dissatisfied coaching team.
“We know we weren’t at our best at the weekend,” says the player with 115 Ulster appearances behind him.
“We’ve had a pretty harsh (post-match) review and we’ve got to improve on a lot of things.
“We left a lot of points out there and probably got dominated
at the breakdown.
“Our work-on this week is going to be physicality, especially around that breakdown area. They slowed up our ball and got a lot of turnovers.”
An old hand at the Champions Cup back-to-back games — he was involved in both matches between the sides back in December 2017 when Ulster came through with two wins — the Kiwi essentially sees games three and four as totally different occasions rather than an extension of the previous weekend.
More importantly, this round four is about trying to win away and with rather more to spare than last Saturday and, indeed, from the group opener at Bath.
“We just about got away with that (last weekend). We know if we produce that again over there they’ll probably beat us.”
Still, he can hardly ignore the situation in the group which sees Ulster still top after winning three from three, to sit one point ahead of Clermont Auvergne. Another win would be huge for the province.
“We really must start kicking on now,” Reidy states.
“We’ve gone over there and fronted up before, but the job is not even half done yet.”
AS the decade draws to a close, we’re looking back at an eventful 10 years at Kingspan Stadium. Over the coming days, we’ll be asking you to help us pick our Ulster team of the decade, with the scrum halves up for review today.
SCRUM HALVES Ruan Pienaar
THE Springbok World Cup winner to much fanfare in 2010 and quickly set about showing his class with a string of match-winning performances.
Overthe course of seven years in an Ulster jersey he would become the province’s greatest foreign import and a talisman for a side that reached four consecutive European quarter-finals as well as a PRO12 final.
His career in Ireland would end in controversial circumstances, refused a contract extension by the IRFU due to a ruling on “succession planning”.
His emotional farewell against Leinster atthe end of a season yielding no knock-out rugby was ill-fitting for a player who had rejected the lure of Toulon to remain in Ireland at the end of his first contract.
Still plying his trade in the PRO14 with the Cheetahs.
DESPITE his career largely over-lapping with that of Ruan Pienaar’s, Paul Marshall
still racked up over 200 appearances for his native province.
Capped by Ireland on three occasions, having made his debut in the Six Nations of 2013, the former Methody pupil would retire at the end of the 2017/18 season but can still be found regularly at Kingspan Stadium working in a media capacity. Made his debut in 2006 against Dragons and by the turn of the decade was an established member of the squad.
During Pienaar’s absence through injury or international duty Marshall would prove to be a more than able starter while the tempo he brought from the bench made him an archetypal game-changer in the closing stages of games against tiring opposition.
AMID the furore caused by Ruan Pienaar’s exit, few could have predicted the success that John Cooney
would make of his move north. Having won a Heineken Cup with Leinster — after a final played against Ulster — and a Pro12 with Connacht, Ulster would be the Dublin native’s third province but the first where he would get an injury-free run.
Having struggled with a shoulder issue prior to the switch, Cooney earned a first Irish cap on the summer tour to Japan before making his Ulster bow and quickly set about winning over the Kingspan
faithful.
Now in his third season, he is arguably the side’s stand-out performer, his recent form in Europe especially raising calls for him to play a prominent role in next year’s Six Nations.
To vote for your favourite, simply go to www.belfasttelegraph. co.uk and watch out for the rest of the positions being filled over the coming days