The Ulster legend tore into his own province while praising the work that Rassie Erasmus and his team have done.
This time last year, Munster’s season was well and truly over. They defeated Scarlets on the last day of the Guinness PRO12 season to scrape into the Champions Cup, much to the relief of head coach Anthony Foley.
A little over 12 months on and the change has been remarkable. Munster reached the Champions Cup semi-finals, topped the regular season league standings and, today, face Scarlets in the PRO12 championship final. It would all be so wonderful had the season not included the heartbreaking passing of Foley, in Paris, last October.
During a recent appearance on The Hard Yards rugby podcast, Stephen Ferris highlighted [from 34:00 below] where Munster director of rugby Rassie Erasmus has gone so right and Ulster have gone so wrong.
https://soundcloud.com/thehardyardssportsjoe/episode-16-first-experiences-with-ireland-paul-oconnells-roguery-and-ulsters-biggest-problem
“It’s a worry for me,” Ferris admitted, “the amount of Ulster guys that are coming through the system and representing their province. Born and bred in Ulster.
“A friend of mine who signed for Munster at the start of this season, and ended up moving to Connacht, was a guy called John Andress. He never got a start oor got onto the matchday 23 for Munster.
“I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Rassie only wants to pick home-grown guys who actually know what it means to play for Munster. If there’s a young guy who’s a tight-head and he’s showing a bit of belief or has a bit of hunger about him, he’s going to pick him ahead of me every single time’.
“I’m not saying that it’s necessarily right but it’s something that John thought was fair enough. I’m sure he was thinking, ‘This guy has played his whole career for Munster Rugby while I’m just coming in here trying to establish myself as a Munster man’.”
Focusing on Ulster, a team he represented 106 times and played for in the 2012 Heineken Cup final, Ferris has genuine concerns that they are directionless and in trouble now that Ruan Pienaar has departed.
When Rory Best and Iain Henderson link up with Ireland, next season, Ferris stated that the Ulster pack could, conceivably, not feature a single home-grown player.
“You look at the pack and, yes, there are a couple of Irish qualified players in there but none of them were born and bred in Ulster.
“It’s a worrying thing for me because you don’t want to see any of the provinces turn into a Toulon, where you go out and buy in marquee players every summer and hope that because you’ve got this unbelievable name, like Marcell Coetzee, that it will turn everything around.
“You’ve got to build a team and Ulster just don’t have that at the minute.”
It certainly seems like new Ulster coach Jono Gibbes and his staff have lots of work to do and they could certainly do with a few younger, local lads to burst through in the next 12 to 18 months.
