Edinburgh Rugby

The URC is back upon us.

The provincial season getting underway with Ulster against Edinburgh and Connacht against Stormers on Friday night.

We had a busy week for the 42 subscribers previewing the seasons of each of the four provinces.

Mike Sherry joined us on Wednesday to look ahead to the campaigns of Munster and Connacht.

And could New Zealand rugby scrap their super rugby sides to secure their financial future? First up today, the domestic rugby season gets properly up and running this weekend.

Connacht begin their URC campaign tomorrow night with the visit of the Stormers to Dexcom Stadium, while Ulster's first run out sees them welcome Edinburgh to Belfast.

That season ended on a downer for Richie Murphy's side.

A final day defeat at home to the Glasgow Warriors saw them miss out on the URC top eight, and they were hammered by Montpellier in the Challenge Cup final in Bilbao.

So a win for them, a very tough scraping back to get the win and a couple of citations coming out of it not what they wanted.

In other news there you have Ulster vs Edinburgh on Friday.

Richie Murphy there saying that his squad is in a very good place despite all the injuries.

uh james hume is out uh this weekend as well and joanna augustus is expected back uh for that game as well so yeah huge game for them uh moving over there i suppose the connacht as well they have stormers on friday and you know lancaster there as well so we can't talk about street lancaster without talking about how he is said he won't be contending uh or contesting i suppose the leinster coaching and he's looking for a couple more years on his contract with Connacht so they'll be delighted about that definitely Ciarán Frawley be delighted about that considering he just went over there and it'd be a disaster for him if he was then come back to Leinster but yeah look it's it's going to be a tough game for them and you know thinking of where they finished up last year and getting into that you know URC just about sorry URC final eight just about you know it's definitely going to stick to them to have Lancaster there staying on and making sure that they succeed in every avenue but let's get into round one games this weekend well it's I'm just I'm just delighted to have it back you know I was just as I don't know what I was listening I think it was maybe it was off the ball and one of the the guests there were saying we're just pining for a bit of rugby it's so late 24th of September and we're talking about you know previews of games with the first one that was kicking off tomorrow and Friday but our game being on Saturday I just you know just want Leinster back you know And obviously we've been absolutely blessed, thank God, that the women were playing pretty much all the way through August and all the way up until this weekend and are playing again this weekend.

You know, South Africa's conference league essentially is just absolutely phenomenal.

So I do think Stormers are going to win that one.

Ulster versus Edinburgh.

My gut really wants Ulster to win it.

Am I right in saying there was? Well, I'm going to leave it to you because I think I'm mixing it up with the Sharks game.

Ulster minus 11.5 here against Edinburgh.

What are your thoughts?

Yeah, so I think it opened...

They finished 14th.

They will get better, but this is a terrible Ulster team, I think.

It's not that much different with Edinburgh.

Edinburgh have a really inexperienced back line, but I think the Edinburgh back is considerably better than the Ulster back.

yeah so I think exciting times ahead and we will do predictions at the end so people just have to wait for game predictions till the end of the podcast that's exactly it keep down the hooks here listen to it all of

it let's move on to Ulster versus Edinburgh also Friday night also at quarter eight in the Afidea Stadium up in Belfast this is a nice game for Ulster to get into will I go through the team sheet or do you want to do it this time

I'll go I'll go to the team sheet this time so we have in the forwards we have Erica Sullivan in the number one jersey James McCormack Eduardo Bello Eli Schneiman Ben Donnell David McCann Martin Maloney and James McNabney McNabney sorry and then our backs are Connor McKee in the nine Jack Murphy at ten and Itzel King, I'm not going to add in the other part of his name just to keep it simple from his Leinster days.

Jamie Benson, Ben Carrison, Robert Ballacoon and Michael Larry, who is the captain, rounding out the starting 15.

And you're right.

I'd like to have seen Ward playing.

This is one of those games, Edinburgh are a funny team.

Yeah.

You know, we've got off to a good start in Prem Cup.

One probably a little bit different against Edinburgh, which I was pleased with.

But look, we're in a good spot at the moment.

I'm really excited for Friday night.

You can't be doing that.

Yeah, and when we're looking at Swansea, they only managed the two tries the week before against Edinburgh.

These are really both away games, two really tough in that top three that we'll talk about, Cardiff and Edinburgh.

So it's a hell of a tough start.

Cardiff, obviously on their own field, did manage to get their backline moving a bit more.

We were looking at whether players like Tom Bowen would start dropping in, etc.

But You see that T-bow in on the bench, you go, oh, here we go.

They are slotting them back in already, which I think is the sign that Cardiff are warming up for Edinburgh Vale for our annual, let's get into it at the start of the season and come up with Cardiff excuses.