Ulster complete European odyssey
From Irish Times
By GERRY THORNLEY
Great occasion and great result. Not a great match but then, who cares? Certainly Ulster and Ireland didn't. Keeping Colomiers in a vicelike grip from start to finish, Ulster carried out Harry's game to the letter without needing the moments of inspiration from earlier matches. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Credit again to Harry Williams, for if the truth be told Ulster's whole adds up to more than the sum of their parts. The occasion consumed the match but it didn't consume Ulster. They are on such a roll now that they had utter belief in their ability to carry out the gameplan even more rigidly than before.
Competitive and well-organised in the tight, fired up in the loose - the pack scavenged relentlessly. It merely remained for the utterly assured David Humphreys to keep the game on the end of his right boot like a puppet, and create the field positions for Simon Mason to do the rest.
"I had 100 per cent faith in him every time he (Mason) took one," said Gary Longwell, no doubt speaking for all his team-mates. Talk about a comfort factor.
The affable adopted Yorkshire-man must have nerves of steel.
Mason had made sure of acquiring the same room he had shared with Simon Geoghegan on his international debut, and at practice on Saturday morning had taken 40 place-kicks. He landed all 40 of them.
Once Mason landed his first penalty, the outcome was never really in doubt. Masey's kicking his goals again; all was right with the world. However, this game was as much about desire as about tactics or technical ability - maybe more so. Ulster simply wanted it more, way more. The red hand suppressed the white dove (Colomiers' emblem) and hardly allowed it to even flutter.
Breaking the habit of the season, admittedly, Ulster did concede three early penalties to turn an early territorial foothold into a three-point deficit. Mark McCall ran on to the pitch under the guise of bottle carrier and beseeched the backs to stand back a yard. They weren't going to be breeched anyway, not with Jonathan Bell playing one of the games of his life.
Humphreys pulled them together and reinforced the need for discipline. Thereafter it was quite comfy really, save for one or two moments. Humphreys put up a couple of pinpoint up-and-unders, discovered the French weren't all that keen on it and kept on doing it pretty much non-stop thereafter. Colomiers, in classic French mode, were up so quickly that he didn't have too many options half the time anyway.
The first-up tackling, around the fringes or in midfield, was mighty - as you'd almost expect from these Ulster warriors by now.
After early travail, the scrum held up very well, Allen Clarke cheekily even taking one against the head which led to a very handy three points, and so too did the line-out.
Adhering to the pepper-the-posts on sight philosophy which has served Ulster so well against the French outfits on this glorious odyssey, Humphreys and Mason had six attempted drop goals between them in addition to Mason's six penalty shyes at goal. What with the aerial bombardment from Ulster's two principle weapons as well, Lansdowne Road was almost like a step back in time.
Probably not since Ollie Campbell was directing Ireland's old warhead of a pack with his trusty right boot has Lansdowne Road seen so much boot on ball. For all the game's evolution toward more running rugby and ball retention, it just shows that high intensity kicking, coupled with high intensity tackling, can still win matches.
When a groggy Benjamin Lhande was helped off at the end of the first quarter, you half expected the stretcher to be brought on for the battered ball as well, and a new replacement one sought.
And just like those good old, rose-tinted days - half imagined - of yore, not only was it playing to Irish virtues but to French vulnerability as well. Them French don't like it when it's put up to them like that.
Nor, much the same as anyone else, do they like it when the opposition place-kicker keeps the scoreboard ticking over three-pointers unrelentingly. Mason's final tally of 18 points, for a record of 46 out of 46 on the day, set a benchmark of 144 points. From just nine games, at a staggering rate of 16 points per match, presuming the format stays the same it will take some beating.
The game's longest longeur came around this juncture, the two sides nervously trading one turnover for another until Gary Longwell's line-out drive laid the platform for Mason's third penalty and if there was a key moment in the match it probably came when Clayton Thomas correctly if surprisingly penalised Colomiers at a close-range penalty for deliberate obstruction in front of the ball carrier. Placing their bodies accidentally on purpose in front of the ball was something they were particularly cute at although in this instance it's probably fair to say they've used the tactic 10 or more times in domestic fare and never once been blown for it.
Instead of a potential 9-10 deficit, Ulster went 12-3 ahead in injury time courtesy of the masterful Mason once more. Again Humphreys' up-and-under had been right on the money, and from the Bell-McWhirter scissors off the scrum which saw Jan Cunningham held up, Colomiers had killed the ball.
As Humphreys admitted afterwards, Ulster have been acutely conscious of Irish sides starting the second half sluggishly. Ulster's post-interval whirlwind wasn't quite of their semi-final vintage against Stade Francais - and that try - but it was vintage three minutes and three kicks from Humprheys all the same.
First the 60-metre line kick, then the up and under, and then the drop goal. Andy Ward, immense as ever, did the groundwork for Mason's next penalty and after Michael Carre's penalty Colomiers opted for catch up from the restart - fully 20 minutes from time.
Invariably, this played into Ulster's red hand. Sadourny countered along the touch-line inside his 22, Sheldon Coulter nailed him and after barging through the line-out, Colomiers saw Mason put Ulster further out of sight.
The climax was almost too easy. There wasn't the threat of a French comeback as in the earlier knock-out matches. But for all that, the almost un-Irish refusal to concede a late try was one of the day's most satisfying sights. As the crowd chanted for Ulster, the Ulster players said "no way".
As it transpired, following that pre-match lap by the players, Humphreys revealed that they had said "there was no way we were going to lose this." Stade Francais and Toulouse would have struggled to cope with Ulster again on Saturday. In fact, though it wasn't a vintage game or display, it would have taken a damned good side to deny them, even the absent English ones. Except, maybe, London Irish.
Scoring sequence: 5 mins: Labit penalty, 0-3; 10: Mason penalty, 3-3; 15: Mason penalty 6-3; 36: Mason penalty 93; 40: Mason penalty 12-3; 42: Humphreys drop goal, 15-3; 52: Mason penalty, 18-3; 59: Carre penalty, 18-6; 67: Mason pen 21-6.
ULSTER: S Mason; S Coulter, J Cunningham, J Bell, A Park; D Humphreys (capt), A Matchett; J Fitzpatrick, A Clarke, R Irwin, M Blair, G Longwell, S McKinty, T McWhirter, A Ward. Replacements: S McDowell for Cunningham (half-time), G Leslie for Irwin (72 mins). D Topping for McWhirter (75 mins),
COLOMIERS: J-L Sadourny; M Biboulet, S Roque, J Sieurac, B Lhande; L Labit, F Galthie; S Delpuech, M dal Maso, S Graou, J-M Lorenzi, G Moro, B de Giusti, S Peysson, P Tabacco. Replacements: D Skrela for Lhande (21 mins), M Carre for Labit (52 mins), P Pueyo for Peysson.
Referee: C Thomas (Wales).
