Mark Anscombe signs up for another year with Ulster

Ulster coach Mark Anscombe has signed a one-year contract extension, which ensures he will remain with the province until at least the summer of 2015. The Kiwi, who has led Ulster on an unbeaten Heineken Cup run this season, joined Ulster in the summer of 2012 and began his stay by guiding the team to an unbeaten 16 game run in the Pro12 league and Heineken Cup.

That same season Ulster made the final of the Pro12 league and the quarter-finals of the Heineken Cup and in the process Anscombe became the first Ulster coach to win in France when the side beat Castres 8-9.

This season Ulster have recorded six wins out of six in their European Cup pool, including away wins over Montpellier and Leicester. The Province now meet Saracens on April 5th in their first home Heineken Cup quarter-final in 15 years.

“I have enjoyed my time at Ravenhill so far. We have made good progress, we have a great squad and some excellent young players coming through, so I am pleased to be committing for a further year,” said Anscombe.

“I said when I started at Ulster that I believed that this would be a three-year project. We are half way through that now. We have a home Heineken Cup quarter-final and we are competing for a play-off place in the RaboDirect PRO12 once again. My focus over the next year and a half will be to finish the job that I have started and to bring some silverware back to Ravenhill.”

In Sunday's meeting with Scotland in the Six Nations Championship, Ulster contributed five players - Rory Best, Dan Tuouhy, Luke Marshall, Chris Henry and Andrew Trimble - to the Irish starting lineup with Paddy Jackson and Iain Henderson on the bench.

"Through his coaching, knowledge of the game and experience, Mark Anscombe has taken team performance to a new level and we are delighted he has committed to the province for a further 12 months," said Ulster's director of rugby, David Humphreys "The redevelopment of Ravenhill is almost complete, we are in a home Heineken Cup quarter-final, and our representation in the Ireland squad is growing."