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Ian Madigan stars as Ulster beat Connacht
By PA
Ian Madigan helped himself to 22 points in Ulster’s 32-19 Guinness PRO14 derby win over Connacht at the Sportsground.
Despite having 17 players unavailable for selection, Dan McFarland’s men prevailed to make it nine straight wins and extend their lead at the top of Conference A.
Connacht notched tries through Jack Carty and John Porch during Kyle McCall’s sin-bin period, while three Madigan penalties had Ulster only 14-9 behind at the break.
The visitors seized control with tries from player-of-the-match Jordi Murphy and Nick Timoney, and despite Tom Daly touching down in response, Madigan steered Ulster home with penalties after 65, 74 and 78 minutes.
The Dubliner punished Daly for hands in the ruck after two minutes, and he rewarded Murphy’s breakdown work with a booming 10th-minute place-kick.
Trailing 6-0, Connacht were made to work hard for their opening points. Finlay Bealham was held up short before three successive scrum penalties led to Ulster loosehead McCall being binned.
Fed out wide in the 20th minute, Carty reached over in the right corner despite Timoney’s covering tackle. Carty added a fine conversion for good measure.
Connacht’s lead was brief, though, as Ultan Dillane took out Kieran Treadwell at a lineout and Madigan stepped up to make it 9-7.
Another penalty provided the platform for the westerners’ second try in the 27th minute. Good hands from Tiernan O’Halloran and Daly put Porch over, with Carty converting again from far out.
However, a five-point advantage was a poor return for Connacht’s 80 per cent share of first-half possession, and Ulster – with a strong wind behind them from the restart – were quick to make them pay.
With their forwards providing some penetration, Alby Mathewson wriggled out of a tackle from Carty and it was openside Murphy who burrowed over from the resulting ruck.
Madigan converted and also added the extras to number eight Timoney’s score five minutes later. A clever move saw Greg Jones unleash Timoney and he bounced off Porch’s attempted tackle to scramble his way over.
Crucially, Connacht began the final quarter with their third try, a strong burst from centre Daly seeing him break James Hume’s tackle before crossing the whitewash.
But 26-19 is as close as Connacht got, with Ulster winning the key breakdown decisions late on. Madigan finished with eight successful kicks from nine attempts, his final two efforts rewarding replacement Matthew Rea’s efforts over the ball.
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Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
Go to commentsYou always get idiots who go overboard. What else is new? I ignore them. Why bother?
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