The Red Eye

URC 5 - Ulster (a) - Round 9

By Tom Savage12 min read

On several metrics, Ulster are the best team we’ll have faced in this, the halfway mark of the season.

They have the best 22-entry conversion in Europe, they have the lowest number of possessions per try in Europe, the best defensive lineout in the URC, and they’re one of five clubs — Toulon, Toulouse, Bayonne and Northampton — who are converting over 50% of their linebreaks into tries at this point in the season. In a lot of ways, they are a more dangerous outfit than Leinster at the moment, despite that fixture taking up all the oxygen over the last few weeks.

As it stands, I have this game marked down as a +1 on my season model; that is to say, a losing bonus point would be ideal here, and that’s as much to do with how difficult Ulster are to play at home, usually, along with how well they’ve been going so far this season.

As you’d expect given the usual schedule around this time of year, we’ve rotated for this away game, and Ulster have loaded up, where possible, allowing for injury, which only adds to the difficulty of the game as it stands.

Are they unbeatable? No, far from it, but Ulster have really done well this season in maximising what they’re good at, and minimising where they’re still very much a work in progress. Elements of Ulster’s good work this season have been down to a weirdly handy schedule which has seen them play both the Bulls and Sharks while they’re on the lowest ebb they’ve been on for some time — well, the Bulls anyway, the Sharks seem to oscillate between good and diabolical every other season — while stacking wins up against other sides who’ve been on something of a downswing themselves, like Benetton and Connacht.

You could say the same for Munster, however, outside of that win against Leinster in Croke Park.

It’ll take an away performance like that to get what we need out of this game, I think. Ulster are on a roll. They are scoring tries at an incredible rate, and we’ve chosen this game as the main rotation piece of this Christmas/New Year block. That doesn’t mean we can’t win — Ulster have looked vulnerable at a lot of points this season, and I’ll get to those shortly — but it does mean we can’t afford the bad start we had against Bath or both Leinster games.

There’s a lot of top-four momentum on the line here. A win would see us locked in the top four conversation until our South African tour, at the very least. A losing bonus point, or two, keeps us right in the hunt. A 5-0 loss to Ulster could be damaging, and that has to be avoided, which is always true, but it’s worth saying.

Munster: 15. Mike Haley; 14. Calvin Nash, 13. Dan Kelly, 12. Alex Nankivell, 11. Thaakir Abrahams; 10. JJ Hanrahan, 9. Paddy Patterson; 1. Josh Wycherley, 2. Diarmuid Barron (C), 3. Michael Ala’alatoa; 4. Jean Kleyn, 5. Fineen Wycherley; 6. Tom Ahern, 7. John Hodnett, 8. Alex Kendellen.

Replacements: 16. Lee Barron, 17. Jeremy Loughman, 18. Conor Bartley, 19. Jack O’Donoghue, 20. Brian Gleeson, 21. Ethan Coughlan, 22. Tony Butler, 23. Seán O’Brien.

Ulster: 15. Jacob Stockdale; 14. Werner Kok, 13. James Hume, 12. Stuart McCloskey, 11. Zac Ward; 10. Jack Murphy, 9. Nathan Doak; 1. Angus Bell, 2. Tom Stewart, 3. Tom O’Toole; 4. Iain Henderson (c) 5. Joe Hopes; 6. Cormac Izuchukwu, 7. Nick Timoney, 8. Bryn Ward.

Replacements: 16. Rob Herring, 17. Eric O’Sullivan, 18. Scott Wilson, 19. Harry Sheridan, 20. David McCann, 21. Conor McKee, 22. Jake Flannery, 23. Jude Postlethwaite.

Ulster through the Red Eye 

Ulster’s season profile is unusually clear when you strip it back to our usual fundamentals. They are not simply “dangerous in attack” as the baseline stats suggest; they are turning possession into tries at the quickest rate in the league, and they do it through a repeatable formula: carry quality, width, and rapid conversion once the defence is bent.

That is why their big days look like they could be world beaters, but it is also why the right type of opponent can drag them into a far more expensive game.

All stats via OPTA.

They score quicker than anyone, and that defines the entire match

Ulster sit at 7.9 possessions per try, the best figure in the URC dataset according to OPTA. In practical terms, that means they do not need long build-ups or a huge share of the ball to put points on you. Give them a handful of good possessions in the right zones, and they can build a try return that looks out of proportion to the flow of the game. That’s been a key part of watching Ulster this season; they’ve been so efficient with their scoring that they can look like they’re treading water for long stretches, but in between high-efficiency scoring sequences from a number of different sources. Other sides have looked more complete, I would say, but very few have looked as dangerous as Ulster have when they’re “on”.

We see it across the match set so far this season: they can rack up huge entry counts and overwhelm teams (Benetton, Racing, Dragons), but they can also win with limited access. The Sharks game is the perfect example of just how ruthless they can be.

For Munster, the immediate takeaway is simple: we cannot allow Ulster to play a low-possession, high-output match. If they’re scoring on single-digit possessions, we’re not in a defensive arm-wrestle; we’re in damage limitation mode and territory management.

Why it works: Ulster’s carry profile creates advantage-led entries

Ulster’s carry numbers explain why their attack converts so quickly:

  • 60.3% gainline
  • 36.8% dominant carries
  • 22.2% evasion
  • 51.4% breaks-to-try
  • Offload profile that is both ambitious and accurate (79.0% success) with a meaningful proportion leading directly to try/break (17.2%)

That combination is the real engine of Ulster’s scoring. They don’t need to be perfect; they just need enough collisions to be “won” to keep the defensive line retreating and resetting. Once a defence is chasing, Ulster have the handling and continuation to turn half-breaks into full entries, and linebreaks into tries on just over half of all their linebreaks. Formidable.

Then you see the stylistic layer that makes it hard to set your feet:

  • A very high rate of playing wider than the first receiver (34.8%)
  • Strong 20m+ movement (12.7%)
  • Plenty of 5+ phase possessions (18.3%)
  • They’re not living off contestable kicking either — contested kick rate (10.2%) and a relatively lower share of possessions ending by kick (37.4%) suggest they want ball in hand, not a perpetual aerial fight.

Put that together, and you get a team that is fundamentally built to stretch you horizontally, win just enough collisions to bend you, and then strike quickly when the line fractures, especially in that 3/4 space through Stockdale, primarily.

Their try origins show the trap: they can hit you from anywhere

Ulster’s tries aren’t coming from one source that we can remove. Their profile includes:

  • 51.7% set piece
  • 20.7% turnovers
  • 31.0% originating in their own half
  • 10.3% from kick returns

So the danger is not only “defend their lineout” or “don’t cough up turnovers” — it’s that Ulster can score from structured launch, broken-field chaos, and long-field possessions. If we give them cheap entries or linebreaks, they take them.

This is where discipline and accuracy become tactical, not just a default expectation. Against Ulster, the cost of a sloppy exit, a loose carry, or a fractured chase is not a reset; it can be seven points inside two or three possessions.

Where they can be stressed: lineout supply and defensive denial

The most actionable weakness in Ulster’s profile sits in the set piece. They have a heavy set-piece try share, but their lineout own-win rate is 80.0%, which is very low in this context. Their scrum is steady rather than dominant (88.9% own-won).

For Munster, that’s a genuine lever. If Ulster are the URC’s quickest team from possession to try, then the most valuable thing we can do is control the quality and frequency of the possessions they get. A lineout that’s under pressure doesn’t just reduce their launch quality; it forces them into more phase-play to access the same outcomes — and that’s where we can begin to tax them.

Defensively, Ulster’s story is almost the mirror of their attack. They tackle well enough (88.7% success), but they don’t read as a top-tier “shut-down” unit:

  • Gainline denial 24.6% (low)
  • Dominant tackles 3.8% (low)
  • Missed tackles leading to try/break 28.0 (costly)

That doesn’t mean we can run straight through them; it means their defensive profile is less about consistent, violent control and more about surviving enough to let their attack win the game. And that matters because it gives us a clear angle: if we can play in their half and keep our own errors down, we should find chances. That means kicking at volume, making the drop incredibly scrappy and then shutting down their linebreak generating ability with our own defensive suffocation, which is one of the best in Europe. 

Suppress their separation, not their tempo

Ulster are comfortable living at high ruck counts. The match sample confirms that they’ll happily go to 95–113 rucks if it’s producing entries. So the goal is not to stop Ulster playing phases. The goal is to stop those rucks producing linebreak conditions.

When Ulster win, their linebreak yield sits in a healthy band; when they lose, it collapses into a low-separation profile where entries become expensive to generate. More rucks, more carries, more energy expended. That is the entire tactical premise against them: make their attack pay a linebreak tax.

If we can turn Ulster’s possessions into long sequences without separation — and avoid gifting them penalties — we’re not guaranteeing they won’t score, but we are pushing them away from what makes them exceptional so far this season.

Kicking Context

Ulster kick more frequently against stronger opposition, but the impact on their LBR is mixed, and looks more like a game-state/territory choice than a clean driver of linebreak output.

Using their nine-match sample from this season, and treating Leinster, Bulls, Sharks, and Lions as the “stronger” tier:

  • Vs stronger opponents: average K:P = 1:5.7

  • Vs the rest: average K:P = 1:10.1

That’s a meaningful shift. Put another way: Ulster’s kicks per pass are roughly 0.194 vs 0.112 — about 1.7x more kicking in the stronger-opponent games.

You can see it in the extremes:

  • Leinster: 1:3.7
  • Sharks: 1:4.2
  • Connacht: 1:5.7 (not in the “strong” bucket above, but it fits the same pattern of “harder game = more kicking”)

Does that change their LBR?

Across the same buckets:

  • Vs stronger opponents: average LBR = 7.87 linebreaks per 100 rucks
  • Vs the rest: average LBR = 7.36 per 100

So, on average, their LBR is slightly higher against the stronger group — but that headline is misleading because the spread is huge:

  • High LBR with moderate kicking: Bulls (1:7.3, 11.11 linebreaks per 100 rucks)
  • Very low LBR with heavy kicking: Leinster (1:3.7, 4.69 linebreaks per 100 rucks)
  • Very low LBR without extreme kicking: Cardiff (1:8.1, 4.46 linebreaks per 100 rucks)

When I look at it practically, the pattern is this:

  • Ulster kicking more often does not automatically lower their LBR.
  • But when Ulster go into very kick-heavy mode (Leinster at 1:3.7), their LBR can crater — likely because they’re not getting enough sustained, advantage-led phase play to generate breaks.

Will They Kick More Here? 

If Ulster’s kick rate rises against better sides, we should assume they’ll try to play territory-and-pressure first, then strike when we give them broken-field chances.

So our lever isn’t “make them kick” — they’ll do that anyway. Our lever is:

  • win the exit/return exchanges so their kicking doesn’t hand them cheap entries, and
  • force them into long, low-separation phases when they do keep ball (that’s when their LBR tends to flatten, Cardiff/Leinster style).

What this means for Munster: 

Ulster do kick more frequently against stronger opposition (their K:P tightens into the ~1:6 band), and the effect on their LBR is not linear. That tells us two things: (1) we should expect more kicking as a primary tactic, and (2) we cannot treat “more kicking” as automatically making them blunt. The real risk is what their kicking is designed to create: short fields, broken chases, and “won” entries that let them score fast.

We plan for Ulster’s kick-first mode, not hope they avoid it

If Ulster are in or around 1:6 (or tighter), we assume they are trying to:

  • play territory and squeeze our exits,
  • force us into poor backfield pictures,
  • and generate scoring chances off transition rather than 20-phase attack.

Our response: we don’t chase their kick count; we win the next two exchanges (receipt + exit).

Our biggest KPI is the exit/return battle

When Ulster kick more, the match is decided by whether we turn those kicks into:

  • clean receipts,
  • clean exits,
  • and neutral or positive territory.

We need:

  • calm, connected backfield coverage (no soft shoulders, no split-field confusion),
  • decisive first actions after receipt (kick/hold/pass) to prevent them from setting the transition trap,
  • and zero “cheap” counter-punch chances (turnovers in the backfield/middle third).

Don’t gift them the kind of entries that inflate their LBR

Ulster’s LBR doesn’t automatically drop because they kick; it drops when we force them into long, low-separation possessions. Their kicking is often a mechanism to avoid that tax.

So we want to deny:

  • broken-field returns with disorganised chase,
  • soft penalties that convert a 40m kick into a lineout on our 22,
  • and transition tries off a single isolated carry. We need to be kicking that carry, if that makes sense, by reading the position it starts in. If we’re in between the 10m lines, we’ve got to reset and kick off #9 or #10, ideally.

Defensively, we measure success by “separation allowed”

Ulster will still find rucks and phases. The question is whether those phases produce advantageous events.

Our defensive target: keep Ulster in the “expensive attack” zone:

  • strong edge spacing (no easy width pictures). Don’t give Murphy an easy crossfield kick to Kok or Ward, but look for opportunities — Kelly, Nash and Abrahams in particular — to pressure Hume and Stockdale deep when Ulster go to their layers.
  • disciplined fold (don’t over-chase the ball), stop McCloskey with two-man tackles — Kendellen/Hodnett plus Nankivell.
  • and collisions that stop their carry+continuation rhythm (even if we’re not dominating the tackle every time).

Live Red Eye triggers for us

  • Ulster K:P ≤ 1:6: expect territory squeeze; prioritise receipts, exits, and chase integrity.
  • Ulster scoring feels “too quick”: that’s usually transition/short-field due to the penalty concessions. We tighten our kick decisions and error profile immediately. Essentially, if we’re producing knock-ons under pressure, stop playing phases and kick within one or two rucks max.
  • Ulster LBR climbing early: it usually means they’re getting advantage-led entries (breaks/half-breaks/offload chains). We respond by reducing edge exposure and making them earn red-zone access via slow, multi-phase sequences. In short, start competing on the floor after our usual choke profile tackles and put Doak’s passing under pressure. He (or Murphy) will start to kick in response, and we have to win those engagements in the air.

TL; DR

Against top opposition, Ulster kick more to manufacture the kind of game they want: territory pressure plus fast-strike chances. They’ll have seen enough of our jackal profile (top 20 in Europe) and how few linebreaks we concede (top six in Europe) for us to qualify for that kicking approach.

For us, the answer is not to “out-kick Ulster”; it’s to out-exit them, out-receive them, and starve them of transition entries. If we do that, we force them into the one type of match their numbers are least comfortable with: long, low-separation attack, where points cost time and rucks.