Ulster sign Leone Nakarawa, agree contract extensions for Madigan and Herring
Dan McFarland's Ulster have received a major boost ahead of the 2021/22 season, signing Fijian international Leone Nakarawa and agreeing on contract extensions with Ian Madigan and Rob Herring, the hooker who is currently in Ireland camp preparing for the Six Nations.
Nakarawa, who only recently played his first match for Glasgow in eleven months, has been recruited on a one-year deal by Ulster.
“It’s an exciting time for Leone to be making the move to Ulster for the upcoming season as we look to continue to build on our ambitions as a squad," said McFarland following his capture of the 2016 Rio Olympics gold medal winner.
"Given his broad skill set and experience, as well as some impressive accolades to his name, I’m confident that he will be a valuable addition to the team and we look forward to welcoming Leone to the province.”
Meanwhile, Madigan and Herring both agreed to two-year extensions, further evidence that the pre-Christmas shelving of all contract negotiations by the IRFU has ended.
“I’m delighted to sign a new contract with Ulster - there’s a great atmosphere at the club at the moment," said Herring, who is within touching distance of making his 200th appearance for Ulster. "We're all pretty close mates here, working hard to make memories and win silverware for the province.”
Madigan, who joined Ulster from Bristol, added: “I’m delighted to extend my contract. It was an easy decision for me, and my partner Anna, as we have loved our time in Belfast so far. I have really enjoyed playing under the current coaching team, as well as working alongside some of the younger players in the squad as they break through into the senior team, which is very exciting for the club.
"I believe the team are good enough to win trophies in the near future and that is my No1 goal. I also can’t wait to experience a packed-out Kingspan Stadium and get the opportunity to meet the supporters in-person sometime soon.”
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Well that sux.
Go to commentsLike 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?
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