Rory O'Connor

and the Challenge Cup the benefit of a Challenge Cup season is you can do a reset and you probably need a slimmer squad you can play more academy players but those quotes from Philip Quinn sounds like a reset would be ruinous but Ulster had to cut their budget by around a million pounds I think it was Hugh McGaughy talked about a couple of years ago Ulster have been through this they've gone through this pain maybe they need to slim their playing budget

Maybe there's players on contracts there who shouldn't be there and maybe they need to cut some of the older players to bring through some of the more exciting players.

There's hard conversations needed.

There is a reset.

The first team are underperforming and there's not a great budget to go out there and get Adil Ande and Snyman so you're going to have to find solutions from within and that's a massive coaching challenge for Clayton McMillan who I'm sure would like to bring in

a Tony Brown-esque kind of attack coach to kind of run his attack but might not be able to so there's there's so much going on with Munster it seems like there's always so much going on with Munster it never seems as settled or stable as you'd want it to be I don't think it's good for Irish rugby in any way if that if they start struggling if they slip to the challenge cup

we want all four of the provinces in the Champions Cup competing for the URC it's it's very difficult in this era to have that but the fact that Ulster and Connacht are making Ulster more you know all season and Connacht more recently are starting to make real strides and we saw the contribution they both made to the the national team and like Munster did as well with Jeremy Lockman started three games and Crowley really impressing towards the end of that Six Nations but like it's it will be far better like David Humphries will be worried about the situation that he's looking at

I'm sure there'll be encounters in Land's End Road will be worried as well.

This is not good for Irish Rugby.

It's not good for Munster.

Once again, they're looking to the players in South Africa to come up with a solution to keep the show on the road so that the rest of the organisation can stay afloat.

But they need to look at everything.

They need to look at what's their travelling party, non-playing travelling party down in South Africa.

How much are they spending on that side of things as well?

All of these things need to be on the table.

There can be no secret cows.

I think there are obligations around kind of these things, but it's more kind of, you know, I just think everything needs to be on the table.

I mean, does he need to be flying back?

Like, you know, if he knew there was a meeting this week, does he need to be over the first week?

These are all questions that they need to be ruthless and asking when it comes down to it.