I must admit I was/ am a big fan of Smudger and would possibly have felt down whoever the new coach was and yes I understand we have to move on but I must admit I was not as delighted as some with the arrival of Solly.

I do not know a great deal about the man but three things stick in my mind. Firstly he has never gotten Ulster out of the group stage in Europe. Secondly, when saints played them away Ulster need to score four tries and win by a margin and they never even seemed to go for it, but at the end of the day they (well the supporters anyway) were happy to keep their home run intact. To not lose at home but to never qualify shows a real lack of ambition and tactics to me. Thirdly the size of the turn around when they played Tiggers in Europe, again no coach should be out thought that much in a week. This maybe and probably is doing the man a complete injustice, but is what sticks in my mind.

With regard to Corne, I have no problem with us signing him, in fact I am very happy we did on two accounts, firstly he is a leader and secondly we need a true openside. Foxy is turning into a fine player and AB is world class but neither is at their best doing the ground work IMO and this is where most turn over ball is won and turn over ball is the best. I do however find it laughable that people who did not want him or doubted he should be captain see it very differently having read a couple of interviews and seen him in a Saints shirt for 65 minutes, he is now a different person, whoops just missed the bandwagon. My concerns with him is that at his age (I know he is not old) and playing the way he does is injuries and the fact that coming with his reputation he will be targeted, I know if I was playing against Saints I would spend at least 80 minutes winding him up and so will every team we play.

Everyone is going on about the quality of signings, but have we got the balance right? I think most would agree that we need a tighthead, so we go and buy another loosehead; yes he can play tight but in my experience a prop however good playing on the wrong side is at best average, remember Scelzo Boome again seems a very good signing in a position we needed it. Leroy I am not so sure, I have yet to be convinced by what I have seen so far and one of our major weaknesses has been the lineout, big 19 stone guys are not good lineout jumpers certainly on opposition ball. Just look at the stats if you do not believe me. He will certainly add some grunt up front, but is size more important than technique? Remember England with six players holding the full AB pack? That would be about –34 stone and an unbalanced pack, not saying you would do it through choice but technique rules over size every time.

To the backs, we desperately needed new centres, when JL was missing (and playing injured) last year we looked lost, so we lost our best centre, brought in a new one who has looked good IMO and stuck with what we had last year, we must have amongst the worst in the league.

On the wings we have brought in Wylie and Rhino, both have looked good going forward, no that is not fair Rhino has looked superb going forward and if he can stick on Bruce’s shoulder will get a lot of tries and will probably get to make a lot of hard yards on the blindside and coming in off ten, but defensively Mmmmmmmm.
Like everyone else I was looking forward to Solly’s first selection and was very disappointed to see Larry ahead of Shine. I am not knocking Larry in any way what he does he does well, but I think it is a clear sign of the lack of ambition I talked about at the start. Why play to wingers who are good going forward but not so good in defence and a weaker line out jumper if you are going to kick the ball away all game and if you are not then why not play the guy at ten who gets the backs going much quicker and keeps the back row honest?

I could of course be completely wrong (and I hope I am) but a part from Sam Wigg no one else seems slightly concerned. Is it just preseason expectation, are we all riding along on the bandwagon with everyone heaping more praise than the last, are we really that good, or should a few more be concerned?

Oh well we will find out in a couple of days.