There's something rotten in the state of Ulster.
The last few years hasn't been a great time for the rugby club on the field. Changes of management, loss of key players, a sparsity of genuine talent coming through combined with allowing future internationals to leave the club, bad losses to rivals, no silver but more worryingly they've not really threatened for any either.
Rarely has an Irish club's turmoil required as many commas.
On the management side of things the club has gone from Neil Doak, to Jono Gibbes, to whoever is chosen as the new head coach this summer with Gibbes set to depart, and Les Kiss has ended his stint as Director of Rugby in favour of working with Declan Kidney at London Irish.
Player-wise the club has seen talents like Chris Farrell and Sam Arnold leave, with both set to be teammates and potentially Munster's starting centre pairing next season. While Jacob Stockdale looks to be a world class talent, he's a rarity when it comes to Ulster academy graduates making ripples on the provincial, never mind international, scene.
The state of the club's academy is such that Leinster are supposedly under pressure from the IRFU to allow one of their two understudies at fly-half to leave for game time with Ulster. However, the fact that Leinster have two highly-touted no.10's coming through their youth set-up that can't get adequate game-time because they're behind another academy graduate, Johnny Sexton, in the pecking order may be more of a compliment to Leinster's academy than a damning indictment of Ulster's.
As rare as it is to have such an overload of truly talented individuals in one position, it's almost rarer for the public and media to have such reservations over one of them leaving in favour of playing for Ulster. Many believe it better for Joey Carbery and Ross Byrne to sit tight at Leinster and divide the available minutes between them than to go and start for full seasons with Ulster, which says everything you need to know about the current situation the club find themselves in.
Brian O'Driscoll appeared on OTB AM this Monday, and the former Leinster and Ireland captain raised concerns over the club's management of playing and coaching staff, going as far as calling the club "a bit of a basket case".
Jacob Stockdale has since labelled O'Driscoll's comments as "ridiculous" in an interview with the Belfast Telegraph, while flanker Sean Reidy and the outgoing Gibbes also referencing the comments this week. The words clearly struck a nerve within the camp, but O'Driscoll's perception of the club's current state is shared by Liam Toland, who joined OTB this week, went further by referring to the side as "rubbish", and said that "the standard and culture week-on-week isn't good enough" when talking about a potential move for Joey Carbery.
Alan Quinlan joined Ger on OTB AM as guest co-host on Wednesday, and believes that the criticism may be slightly unfair, particularly when it came to the idea of one Carbery moving there for game-time. "Just because it's not a winning culture there now and they're not challenging for European trophies and the Pro14 currently, that doesn't mean you're going to come back a worse player. Ok, you want to play in a system where there's really good players, he's in one, he's not starting and he needs to play matches".
"I think the system and what's happening in Ulster, it's only going to get better".
While Quinlan's opinion is shared by many Ulster supporters and former players, former flanker Stephen Ferris is not one of those however. Joining OTB AM this morning, Ferris backed O'Driscoll's assessment, defending O'Driscoll against Stockdale's criticism of how often the analyst has actually visited the Kingspan Stadium in recent times.
"For Brian to come out with that opinion is totally fair".
"Jacob Stockdale said he could count on one hand how many times Brian has been to Belfast - well I’m in Belfast every single day and it’s been on everybody’s lips about what’s happened in Ulster rugby over the last 18 months to two years, there has been so much negativity.
Ferris also noted concerns about the club's academy structure, and how many former Leinster players are actually in the side at the minute, but said that he feels the club is beginning to move in the right direction, and backed the possibility of the province forcing their way out of the current rut and regaining a position among the Irish and European elite.
"You’ve guys like Alan O’Connor who would die to be in an Ulster shirt but he’s born and bred in Leinster. You’ve Clive Ross, again he’s not from up north, and then you’re bringing in Marty Moore, then you’ve got Jordi Murphy and John Cooney – there’s a third of your team that are from down south".
"However, I believe that going forward Ulster are a team that are going to galvanise themselves and get back together on the straight and narrow and try get to the heights they were at 5 or 6 years ago.
“I think people easily forget where Ulster were 5 or 6 years ago and there’s been articles about should they abolish Ulster and blah blah blah, I think that’s complete nonsense".
There appears to be a divide in opinions as to whether Ulster are close to finding form and turning things around again, but it appears that almost nobody outside the camp is downplaying the current state the club finds itself in, which makes the case for O'Driscoll's comments being true pretty strong, even if that's about to change this summer.
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