Roots of Ulster revival run deeper this time

RUGBY:IN THE beginning it all seemed so simple. Three seasons had passed. The English clubs continued to maintain an uneasy relationship with the embryonic European competition. Ulster were finding equilibrium after professionalism sent the sport into paroxysms, teams scrambling around for the best players, players for the best teams.

For those first three uneasy years of the new dawn Ulster played in Europe, a cross-border concept that arrived on the coatails of the revolution after the game had found itself in a doleful waltz with deceit and mendacity. After 1995, clubs were no longer forced to live the black economy of duplicity. Instead they had to confront the mystery of what was coming next.

Those early playing days in a shrunken Europe were uneventful for Ulster. The first year they played two and lost two to Cardiff and Begles-Bordeaux. The following season, perhaps giddy on the impossible glamour of an away trip to Neath and the ancient mists of Caledonia, they won one match from four. The third year it was just one win from six, before the skies opened, the thunder clapped and the White Knights charged all the way to a clamorous Lansdowne Road, Colomiers falling 21-6 in the final.

That solitary spike in the Ulster graph sits like a beacon in their European history, one more of hope and aspiration than any sense of them once being an insurmountable force. It’s also a reminder of how heavy the fall. Since the win in 1999 Ulster have not emerged from the pool stages and peaked at second in the group only twice since.

For servants like Paddy Wallace, now in his 10th year and with over 100 Ulster caps, those lugubrious years could so easily have mocked. Bryn Cunningham, who sat on the bench in the 1999 final, then played out a storied career caged in the pool, must have dreamed of spreading wings. More immediately, Andrew Trimble and Rory Best have won a Grand Slam with Ireland but the sting of committing with their home province is their European season has always ended in January. The Armagh hooker Best has been at Ravenhill since 2004, while theology graduate Trimble may have grappled with tougher metaphysical issues, but few more frustrating than the Heineken Cup blackout. He too was a 2004 rookie.

Current backs coach and former international cricketer Neil Doak has had his own experience of having loved, tried and lost. Eight years ago the then scrumhalf travelled to Northampton with Ulster needing a win and four tries to break their knock-out stage duck.

This weekend’s raid on Stadio Luigi Zaffanella is not as onerous, with perhaps just a win required against Aironi, but the barren years since 2003 have magnified the dimensions of the match.

“Northampton was a pretty decent side. The final score was 16-13 to us. We’d a couple of chances early doors but didn’t get the scores. All this week we’ve spoken about going to Aironi. We’ve said things about the process, the basics, the solid set-piece and creating chances. We’ve also spoken about being patient.

“You’ve got to remember that Aironi are in the Magners League and the Heineken Cup for the first time. And they have already beaten Biarritz at home. It’s their last game of the first year and they’ve everything to gain and nothing to lose. They’ve been very, very comfortable at home and beat Biarritz and were quite comfortable doing it.

“Biarritz probably got loose and chased the bonus. That’s what you have to respect. It only takes five seconds for them to score a try so we have to do the basics well. We have to build territory. It is vitally important to take this match.”

Doak’s cricketing career with Ireland ran between 1993 and 2000, when he then fell for rugby. Part of Eddie O’Sullivan’s 2003 World Cup squad an Ireland cap escaped him, although 76 outings with Ulster has given him a broad appreciation of what being a good footballer is about.

In some eyes Ulster would be seen as conservative and insular, their South African connection reaffirming a narrow approach to taking on only those they see as culturally close, able to fit in to life in Ireland’s bible belt. That too is a flat world view. Nevin Spence has a soccer background and played with Northern Ireland under 16s, while Ulster Rugby have also developed fruitful connections with GAA in the province.

“We hold cross-code kicking clinics with the GAA. On Monday night the GAA will look at our rugby kicking skills, see if they can pick out anything useful for their kickers,” says Doak. “We’ve also brought in GAA coaches for our players to learn a little bit about gathering high balls, how to go high and land in the sprint mode to get away from defenders. The GAA use our rucking pads for some of their contact skills, hitting and spinning. Some of their development officers will be coming down to look at us and I’ll show them analysis I do with our kickers.

“Nevin has come from a football background. He’s technically good at kicking and his spatial awareness is good. Coming as a batsman I know that cricket is a team sport but it’s an individual team sport, if you can say it that way. You are facing a bowler and ten other players. You have got to be single-minded and confident.

“Coming through rugby it taught me to push myself. In rugby you need the forwards to be aggressive to allow the backs do their skills. It’s an ultimate team game. But you have to drive yourself. From cricket I was doing my own practice, pass- wise, kicking-wise. From most sports, I think you can take something.”

There are players Doak can see emerging, names that may not resonate in Dublin the same way as McFadden, Ryan, O’Brien and O’Malley have. But Ulster’s home grown are increasingly showing, players like Spence, Luke Marshall, Tommy Seymour, outhalves Paddy Jackson and James McKinney, Jamie Smith and try-scoring Craig Gilroy, who is not Heineken Cup registered; there’s Paul Marshall, David McIlwaine, Niall O’Connor and Ian Whitten.

“From the outside you could say what have Ulster being doing and that’s fair comment,” says Doak. “But we have a good crop coming through. It’s trying to expose them to the next level. It will stand us in good stead over the next few seasons.

“We’re definitely very lucky having such a good group of players. It’s about striking a happy medium of winning and giving young lads exposure. Gilroy is a pretty dynamic runner but like a lot of young guys they’ve a long way to go. They don’t really know what it’s all about, although a little naivety sometimes helps. They’ve got to learn how to deal with adversity the way Munster have. We want to emulate teams like Munster, learn how to win those big games.”

After last Saturday’s match against Biarritz, Doak saw a number of reasons to feel this could be Ulster’s second “breakthrough” year. Firstly they won a tight match that could have fallen either way and secondly their miserly opening in the first half was a dry run of the way they will need to start against Aironi.

They won it playing to instruction, keeping the ball, no one breaking ranks on a typically disgusting Belfast winter’s day. No flourishes, no brain storms. No needless penalties and they, or rather Ian Humphreys, held the nerve. In Humphreys’s kicking cameo was a completed circle too. Big brother David was the orchestrator in chief during the 1999 campaign. How that European high put a smart sheen on the Irish outhalf’s career.

“In the first 15 minutes we didn’t have to make a tackle. That was pleasing for us,” says Doak. “They had to make around 40 tackles in that time. An analyst on television said that we had to make our first tackle of the game in around the 18th minute. That was a great first half for us. It got tight and then we got a penalty in the end. That Humps little penalty made the difference.”

Today Ulster’s ambitions reach further than their stuttering swagger and their dented hubris. Pride is undoubtedly part of their competitive impulse as well as a feeling of self- worth, a sense the consuls, Doak, Jeremy Davidson, Brian McLaughlin and David Humphreys, are on a righteous path in their method and direction. But there is also the matter of lubrication for the rugby machine, the television money, the gate receipts and the spin offs for becoming more popular, the prizes of success that have propelled Leinster and Munster into a relative stratosphere, while venial Ulster have stayed earth-bound, gazing up.

“It’s massive,” Doak says.

“This is a massive game. Progress also brings money. That means upgrades, the squad, the staff, facilities. It can’t be underestimated. It makes a ten-fold difference, ten-fold.”

Time then, for another revolution, for the Ulstermen to stand up.