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Ulster v Leinster / Munster v Ulster
7th January 2008
On the 28th December, The Archipelago found himself shivering in Doncaster train station. Exactly why I was in Doncaster on such a cold, winter evening is a convoluted and not terribly interesting story but, freezing as it was and sitting under a rather grey and existentially hungover cloud as I was, my mood was almost black as I recapped the previous night’s misery at the hands of Leinster.
The previous night, I found myself watching the game in the closest thing a remote Scottish island has to a nightclub, which was more akin to a tiny, terracotta-wallpapered basement with a big screen TV in the corner and a few massive speakers hung from the walls. At half time, despite the skullmelting music that surrounded me, things seemed to be going well. The beer was flowing easily as it always seems to in these parts in the post-Christmas depression, the contest on the rugby field had been a good one and Ulster took a slender and, probably, deserved lead into the break.
The forward battle had been tough and uncompromising with both packs taking chunks out of each other. Perhaps the most interesting battle was the one between the two blindsides. Elsom rocked Ferris to his very core and Ferris returned the blast. Indeed, after that handoff, Elsom may still be picking pieces of his Adam’s Apple out of his shoulder blades. This is what rugby is supposed to look like and the game certainly did enough to grasp the attention of more than one of the islanders.
Sadly, from an Ulster perspective at least, the good mood and the good rugby didn’t last, although the beer continued to flow, if anything, more easily than it had done so. At the start of the second half, Leinster lifted their game and Ulster couldn’t cope. Elsom’s try was well worked and while it only took Leinster a couple of points into the lead, Ulster never looked like coming back from the hammer blow that Leinster had struck right from the kick-off. Ulster took far too long to get going in the second half and had it not been for some strong Ulster defence and just a little bit of luck, the final score could have looked much worse.
This wasn’t a poor Ulster performance but it did highlight the gulf in level of performance, if not exactly class, that still exists between the young and developing Ulster side and a team that has been there and done that in the later stages of the Heineken Cup. The Leinster pack got on top in the second half and they left Ulster with nowhere to go. In a way, there’s no great shame in losing to a Leinster side packed with international quality but it only highlights a serious issue that seems to be developing with this young Ulster side; the early second half slump.
It happened against the Scarlets and against Leinster; before they can begin looking forward to trophies and late night celebrations, Ulster need to get used to dealing with teams when they turn up the tempo at the start of the second half. Ultimately, Ulster went from a potentially winning position to a losing position against Leinster and threw away a golden opportunity for an away Heineken Cup win in Wales by failing to raise their game
The hopes of a rare Ulster victory against Leinster were high beforehand but Leinster are a team that somehow know how to nullify Ulster over the 80 minutes. Ulster’s record against Leinster stands at an embarrassing 9 losses, 3 draws and zero wins in the Magners League. The closest Ulster have come to beating Leinster since the creation of the Magners League is a count-back victory in the quarter-final of the 2003/2004 Celtic Cup. The fact is that Ulster have, by far, a worse record against Leinster than any other team in the Magners League. To find the last time Ulster beat Leinster out-right, one would need to look back to September 2000 and the 26-13 win in the Interprovincial Championship at Ravenhill… Exactly what Leinster do so well against Ulster remains a mystery but it’s something that Matt Williams needs to work out before the trip to the RDS.
This second half jitter wasn’t, of course, applicable in Limerick. Back in the comfort of home, and just as the clock face in the corner of the screen turned to red for half-time, I found myself screaming at Ian Humphreys to kick the ball into touch. Instead, he launched an up-and-under, took the ball himself and sent Mark McCrea scampering down the wing and crossing in the corner. McCrea’s try took the half-time score to Munster 6 – 22 Ulster; as it was, Ulster were so far over the hill, with the points in the bag that even the biggest of stutters would have made little more than a dent in the 16 point lead.
Instead of the almost-expect stutter, Ulster started the second half with a bang and Tom Court used every one of his 122 kgs to force himself over the line for the bonus point. By the time Howlett crossed for Munster and Trimble added another five points for Ulster, the game was over as a contest but remained a spectacle for every single Ulster fan.
There is no doubt about it; this was one of the great recent Ulster performances. For any team, never mind such a young, inexperienced side, to go to Thomond park and to so convincingly beat a strong Munster team is an achievement in itself but one victory, even one so fabulous, is merely only another step in the right direction. After such a performance, it would be easy to get carried away but Matt Williams needs to focus Ulster for the trip to Murrayfield; Thomond Park was only one step and will be meaningless if Ulster take two steps back against an Edinburgh team that are notoriously difficult to beat at Murrayfield.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that Munster didn’t play their routine game plan, either. From the off, Munster were looking to spread the ball wide as soon as possible. Offloads that Munster players would never have taken in the Heineken Cup were risked, dangerous miss-passes were tried and more than once, they tried to put a grubber-kick through an advancing Ulster blitz defence, rather than to take the ball into contact and work from the fringes. It was a strong Munster team on the park but this was not a Munster team playing the kind of strong tactics that have made them kings of Europe.
Nothing should be taken away from one of the best Ulster performances in the professional era; Tom Court destroyed incumbent international John Hayes in the scrum, while Munster were thoroughly outfought in the second and backrows. Unlike their Munster counter-parts, the fluidity of the Ulster backline was natural and slick; support play was superb and, combined with a few glimpses of individual magic from McCrea and Cave, it was a force that Munster simply couldn’t cope with.
Munster invited Ulster to play rugby and struggled to hold onto the ball but the fact that Ulster punished Munster is a massive step in the right direction. As it was, there was nothing flattering in the 26-point margin of victory and in that, as well as being the first team to ever carry a winners bonus point out of Thomond Park in the professional era, Ulster can find nothing but the greatest satisfaction.
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