Ulster Rugby - Annual Report 2017-18

The Committee has pleasure in presenting the 138th Annual Report and Statement of Accounts for 2017/18. ULSTER BRANCH REPORT INTRODUCTION

to leave the field with injuries in the first half, it would have been easy for the Ulster lads to have decided that it just wasn’t their day. However, they really dug in, tackled everything that moved, took their chances in a clinical fashion and deservedly won by 35-17. This meant that they had finished the season with four wins and a draw from their last five matches, something for which the players and coaching staff should be very proud. Given the age profile of most of the starting fifteen, and with Jordie Murphy, Marty Moore and Will Addison to come in and, hopefully, Marcell Coetzee once again available, the future certainly looks brighter than it did a couple of months ago. John Cooney There can be little doubt that the player with the most unenviable challenge going into the season was the newly recruited scrum-half, John Cooney, who was faced with the task of replacing the brilliant Ruan Pienaar. John met this challenge head on, producing some fantastic displays to win a number of man-of- the-match awards. His all-round ability, not least his committed defensive displays and his accurate goal kicking, quickly established him as a firm favourite of the Ulster fans. His performance in the winner-take-all European Cup qualifier in which he kicked fifteen points to cement yet another man-of-the-match award saw the fans chanting his name well before the end of the match. In all, John scored 226 points in his first season in Ulster, and he was the leading scorer in the Guinness Pro 14 with 175. It was therefore no great surprise that at the Heineken Ulster Awards Dinner, he was voted the Bank of Ireland Ulster Player of the Year, the Ulster Rugby Supporters’ Club Player of the Year and the Rugby Writers’ Player of the Year. Nick Timoney At the beginning of the season, few could have expected a young Academy player to have become virtually a permanent fixture in the Ulster pack. A number of injuries to established back row players presented Nick Timoney with an opportunity which he grabbed with both hands, not to mention a couple of very quick feet, going on to make twenty appearances during the 2017/18 season. His performances were recognised at the Annual Awards ceremony, being named Abbey Insurance Academy Player of the Year The other individual Ulster Rugby Awards Winners, covering a range of Professional, Domestic, referees, and volunteers included Tom O’Toole, Patrick Baird, Chris Busby, Larissa Muldoon, Bethany McDowell, Conor McMenamin, Aaron Sexton, Mark Orr and Matthew Agnew. Following their brilliant season, City of Armagh RFC was voted Kukri Sports Club of the Year. and BT Young Player of the Year. OTHERS AWARD WINNERS

It is something of an understatement that 2017/2018 proved to be a somewhat difficult season. While there were a number of highs and lows, it was the latter which were most reported by the news organisations and on social media in its various forms. Needless to say, bad news made for the best stories, while the good news was often overshadowed or forgotten. In order to establish some balance, I have begun this report by focusing on the more positive aspects of the season. Women’s Rugby World Cup – Ireland 2017 In August 2017 Ireland delivered the best attended Women’s World Cup ever. It was the most viewed on television, the most viewed online and the most discussed Women’s World Cup in history on social media. It had a record total attendance of 45,412. The Dublin pool stages had sold out months in advance with 17,516 attending matches, while the final stages in Belfast attracted over 27,000 spectators across the semi-finals and finals day. 51% of spectators attending the final stages were visitors from outside the island of Ireland. Record television viewing figures were recorded in Ireland, France, UK and USA. A new tournament record audience peaked at 3.2 million for the France v England semi-final, while 2.65 million tuned in to watch the final at the Kingspan Stadium on ITV’s main channel - the largest single audience for a Women’s Rugby World Cup final and almost half of the audience for the men’s final in the U.K. at Rugby World Cup 2015. Ireland 2017 was the most socially engaging World Rugby event of 2017, generating record video views, social engagement rates and website traffic, including 45 million views across official tournament platforms, the best-performing World Rugby event of the year and the biggest since Rugby World Cup 2015. There were 63,000 uses of #WRWC2017 in total, while 50,000 new fans joined World Rugby’s social media communities. 600,000 unique users from 223 different territories visited www.rwcwomens.com over the duration of the tournament. The Ulster Branch can be justly proud of its contribution to this terrific event. Two venues, Queen’s University and the Kingspan Stadium, were utilised for the knock- out stages, and the feed-back from fans, the IRFU and indeed from World Rugby, could not have been more positive. Our congratulations are therefore recorded to all those staff and volunteers who combined to make this such a successful venture. Ulster v Ospreys – Sunday 20th May 2018 Following what could best be described as an up and down season, Ulster played against the Ospreys in a vital match to decide which of the two teams would qualify for next season’s European Rugby Champions Cup. With Ulster’s three lions, Rory Best, Iain Henderson and Jared Payne already ruled out, Charles Piutau and Ross Kane picking up injuries in the warm-up and two others forced

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