A few years ago the Celtic League was a bit of a farce because of the fact that with International commitments some of the bigger teams were pretty much unable to compete on a lot of weekends. Thankfully this situation is somewhat resolved these days but unfortunately there still are weekends when many players are […]
Tonight saw two of the Irish provinces in action in the Celtic Cup. Munster played host to Edinburgh, while Ulster travelled to meet the Ospreys. Ulster lost out in the end, despite keeping within striking range of The Ospreys for the vast majority of the match. In the Munster match, the lead changed hands a number of times, but in the end Munster ran out victors in an extremely close match.
Ulster beat the Llanelli Scarlets by 16 points to 3 to seal eight spot in the Celtic League and more importantly guarentee themselved Heineken Cup Rugby next season.
Today continued to be a busy news day with the announcement from Leinster that they would be signing England and Wasps prop Will Green. The signing is clearly intended to strengthen up Leinster’s front five which has come in for a lot of critism recently.
This weekend is crucial for Connacht and Ulster with regard to their Heineken Cup chances and both sides seem to be prepared for that. Ulster look like they are well on their way to having a big crowd at their game V Llanelli. Should Ulster win they will be certain of a Heineken Cup place next season, but if they lose, it is quite possible that they could miss out on the Heineken Cup. Coach Mark McCall has named a side that is unchanged from the one that lost last weekend to Cardiff.
Today has been an extremely busy day in terms of Irish Rugby news with changes happening all round, mainly to do with Declan Kidney’s switch from Leinster to Munster.
With last weekend’s dissapointing events hopefully fading quickly from everyone’s memories, it’s time to return to the Celtic League where qualifying position for the Heineken Cup and for the Celtic Cup are still left to be decided. Mark McCall has named his Ulster side to take on Cardiff.
At this stage Munster, Leinster and Connacht have all named their sides for this weekend’s Heineken Cup matches. Alan Gaffney announced his Munster side this morning and it was pretty much as predicted. Despite all the injuries the side still contains a huge amount of experience and almost all the team are past or current Irish internationals.
>Ulster finally put some daylight between themselves and Connacht when they beat the Borders by 17 points to 13 last night at Ravenhill. While they are now 3 points ahead of Connacht they’ll be very dissapointed that they weren’t able to beat bottom placed Borders by more. However Connacht have a more difficult final two matches so Ulster will be confident of claiming the final Heineken Cup spot.