Gordon D’Arcy

Richie Murphy cannot go out and just sign players.

You know, the top 14 is the, you know, they have put in the piece where, what, 70% of your squad has to come through the Esquire's.

We know they load their academies with very young overseas talent that eventually mature into French players.

They're happy to give them time.

Invariably, at least 10 French qualified players in every position, if not more than that, because some of the bigger teams will have two quality players in certain positions.

They can go and recruit in that.

Ireland have four teams.

We only have one real functioning academy there.

and a sporadic player development in the other place.

So there is not a lot of movement that players can have and can go through.

So I think the achievement, particularly for Ulster, to get to that final, I think is absolutely phenomenal.

And they've strengthened their squad a little bit.

I think they've obviously been given a little bit of flexibility, but you can see the difference that Angus Bell made.

Augusto was good for periods in the game.

So yeah, I really liked what Ulster did.

They're confined with what they have, the constraints they have within their squad.

It's a pretty good squad.

It is a little bit threadbare as the last couple of weeks have shown.

Strength and depth, that's not going to change.

But I liked how they played and they didn't go into themselves.