GIVEN THE ROLE he has played in his development, you knew that Dan Soper was going to be at Mike Lowry’s Ireland debut on Sunday.
The Ulster assistant coach led the full-back through school at RBAI, had him briefly at Banbridge RFC and then reunited with him again first as skills coach and now as attack coach within the Ulster set-up. At every level, Lowry has thrived under Soper’s guidance.
It was a proud moment when the 23-year-old received his first Six Nations call-up in January and an even prouder one when he was awarded his first cap by head coach Andy Farrell against Italy last week.
With his successor as Ulster’s skills coach, Craig Newby, in tow, the pair made the trip down to the Aviva Stadium to watch in person as Lowry dazzled against the 13-man Italians, scoring twice in the 57-6 rout and, as he has been doing all season, drawing the plaudits once again.
“Immensely proud of how hard those guys have worked to get their opportunity and they all (did) good,” said Newby of Lowry, along with provincial team-mates Rob Herring, Kieran Treadwell and James Hume.
It was nice to see Kieran and Rob as well with big impacts on the latter part of the game. Extremely proud and I’m sure Mikey and his family in particular, after playing the whole game and scoring a few tries, were particularly pleased for all the hard work that he’s put in.”
If it is Soper who has refined their skills into international level players then it is Newby who has kept them there, the former All Blacks flanker slotting into the Ulster coaching staff this season and helping keep their free-flowing attacking style running smoothly.
The 42-year-old always had big shoes to fill, but so far he’s done an admirable job. The province are still playing that skillful 15-man game that Soper pioneered when Dwayne Peel was in charge of the attack, and the pair have worked well in the current set-up.
Hiring Newby over the summer represented a little bit of a risk for Ulster given his relative inexperience at this level and how influential Soper was at working both with the matchday squad and injured contingent. Despite earning passing marks thus far, the ex-Leicester Tiger does believe he’s still learning each day.
“In terms of skills coach, there’s been a bloody good system here for a couple of years with Dan Soper. It’s been taking some of his stuff and putting my spin on it,” explains Newby.
I just try and add my value as best I can. I spend a lot of time with the guys who aren’t playing on the weekend as well, trying to make sure they get what they need to push the matchday (squad), so that’s a real big push from me.
“I’m reasonably modest and I don’t know exactly where I’ve added value, but I come off (the training pitch) feeling good about myself most of the time. As long as I’m enjoying it then I must be doing something okay.
“I’m learning every day. I’m still a young coach at this level, I back my rugby experience as a player and across the last 10 years since I’ve played. I’m still learning every day from a fantastic set-up.
“One thing I’ve really learned is time is precious, and if you can achieve something in a minute or two minutes then we have to take that. You don’t always have as much time in a week as you want in a week, so you can’t waste it by being unprepared or talking too much. We try to let the boys get stuck in by doing.”
Sometimes there’s limits to how much they can let them get stuck in though, their last hit out against Dragons a case in point.
Played at the peak of Storm Franklin with cross-winds making kicking almost impossible and handling a nightmare, it was never going to be a high-scoring game but Ulster did well to control the majority of the contest – even when playing into the teeth of the wind – and keep the Dragons scoreless on their way to a 12-0 win.
And yet as they head into this Friday’s meeting with Cardiff at Kingspan Stadium aiming to reclaim top spot in the United Rugby Championship, Newby insists that performance and result might be more important to them than if they had racked up a big scoreline at Rodney Parade.
“The conditions for rugby were not ideal, and particularly the way we’d like to play is a lot more positive than the conditions would allow,” added the New Zealander, who also revealed that flanker Jordi Murphy might factor into selection this week after missing the Dragons tie.
“We were grateful for coming away with four points from that game and some of the intangible things you can’t measure with statistics were tested and we came through that. We had some good young guys stepping up, like Ben Moxham on the wing who learned a lot about playing conditions.
“It’s just as pleasing as winning at home in dry conditions. Team morale was pretty good on our trip back. Any win’s tough, we’re grateful to receive those wins when we can, but we’ll park that and move swiftly forward because we’ve another challenge coming this weekend.”
Comedian Michael Fry is our special guest on this week’s episode of The Front Row, in partnership with Guinness. Joining host Seán Burke, Eimear Considine and Murray Kinsella, he chats about his family’s rugby background and his short-lived playing days, before using his musical ear to rank the anthems of each Guinness Six Nations team. Click here to subscribe or listen below:
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