I watched this game back four times. I’m in a weird quantum state of knowing exactly how we lost it while also being quite sure that I’m not sure how we lost it.
We were 14-3 up, then we gradually weren’t, then we were losing, then we almost drew the game but didn’t.
Let’s try to iron out that quantum state. But first, some housekeeping*.
*I’m not going to refer to Frank’s Bizarre Adventure in this game outside of this sentence, but there will be times when you will look at a ruck and go “Wait a minute, isn’t that a Munster penalty” and you’ll be right, but I’m not going to go into it, it is what it is, charge it to the game.
With the structures we’re building in attack, the natural point for opposition teams to affect us negatively is to attack our ruck as too much line speed plays into our short passing, multi-option screen game. But this isn’t news to us – we know they’re trying to do that and a lot of what we were doing this preseason has been trying to balance out those two areas of the game. We’ve been adding to our screen game and trying to balance that by making sure our ruck isn’t a weak point.
It was a weak point here and everything looked a hundred times harder.
So let’s look at where and how it got away from us.
The most frustrating part about this is that we seemingly couldn’t react to the pressure that Ulster were exerting on us here, legally or otherwise. If you’re thinking that large swathes of those clips reminded you of our loss to the Sharks in Europe last year, you’d be dead right – that was the template that Ulster used to disrupt us. They had to push the limits of the law but we saw what was happening and didn’t respond in kind.
Right at the end of the game we gave Ulster too many opportunities to counter-ruck. This is a weak body position from Hodnett – his legs are too close to his core – and that disrupts the platform.
Gleeson cleaned out Herring on the ensuing ruck with Herring getting the reward for a second go at the ball off the referee but that was the game at this point – we didn’t do enough to punish Ulster for their compression at the ruck.
We only went at the fringes of the ruck once – early in the second half – and just didn’t go back to it for whatever reason.
If you want the TL;DR of this loss it’s this; played small, weak at the ruck, too many errors, and didn’t adapt to the game as it was playing out in front of us.
If you were reminded of the Benetton game two weeks ago along with the Sharks game from last season’s European Cup – those are good parallels. Our ruck speed was pretty decent overall – 51% were under three seconds – but it was the quality of the ruck platform that hurt us during the middle block of the game when another score would have probably sealed the deal for us at 11 points up.
When you combine that with Crowley, Nankivell and Frisch playing like a trio of lads where only one had a preseason at Munster, one was off at the World Cup and one only arrived a few weeks ago and this was their first-ever start together, you get the kind of inefficiency that plagued us here.
In this example, I think Crowley was trying to hit Nankivell on that “Y line” we were showcasing last week against the Dragons but a combination of Loughman running his line a little shallow – making a tougher pass window – along with the pass being a little rushed led to a turnover.
I think at the point of release, Crowley is looking to hit Nankivell, so he can float around Wycherley, compress defenders and release Frisch with an offload but the pass scrags Loughman – another returnee from the World Cup – and the ball is gone.
Frisch and Nankivill tried to find each other multiple times in this game but just couldn’t link up. If Nankivell throws a better pass here it’s a critical linebreak.
When that ball bounced off Frisch’s forehead, you knew it was going to be one of those days. That connection will come – Crowley, Nankivell and Frisch are all ballers – but on days like this when cohesion has to be faked due to not being in the same building for long enough, mistakes can be contagious and the road you take to avoid that contagion only leads to more of them.
Even this moment, right at the end of the game showcases how “off” we were;
That long pass isn’t really in our scheme. Frisch looking to sling this to Scannell – in the wing spot our #12 has to excel in was flat out the wrong option.
Scannell is the slowest man in the line of players here and the only option worth taking was hitting O’Connor on the short line to attack Flannery with Baloucone covering Nash and Scannell.
That’s the kind of fluster that costs results and the space was there to tie the game up with time to hunt a winner. We need better in those “hot” moments. The pass brought Baloucoune and the touchline into the game and, realistically, Rory Scannell isn’t beating either of those two that far out from the tryline. The chance was gone.
We had another go at tying the game up with the clock in the red but the ball ended up in the wrong hands, unfortunately.
The wrong man running the right line. All the support is running up the 5m line but Scannell drifts infield because he knows he doesn’t have the gas to keep Stockdale out of the game. Drifting infield here only helps the defence and distorts our options infield who we lose from the next phase.
When the chance to tie the game popped up again, right at the death, Crowley was in clearing the ruck so there was no option for Patterson to hit the ball to width.
Small margins but they aren’t so small that we couldn’t have bridged them with a little more composure, athleticism at key points and a bit more power. It didn’t slip anyone’s notice that, when it came to it at the end of the game, Ulster were more than comfortable defending us at close range and that comes back on the impact of our front row off the bench, first and foremost. Ahern had a decent game in replacing Edogbo but he’s not a heavy hitter in the tight – that isn’t his game and shouldn’t be.
The problem was that it’s not Josh Wycherley’s, Scott Buckley’s or Stephen Archer’s game at the moment either so that old familiar sting of looking a little too lightweight in the crunch was palpable again. Only signing players is going to fix that aspect of our profile in the front row at the moment, but that’s been the case for four or five years now at least.
Truth is, I think once you push the poor performance through some cheesecloth, use the negative review positively and, crucially, bounce back with a win next weekend, a losing bonus point in the Kingspan is a decent result without a lot of our front line internationals either starting or closing out the game.
| Name | Rating |
|---|---|
| Jeremy Loughman | ★★★ |
| Diarmuid Barron | ★★★ |
| John Ryan | ★★★ |
| Edwin Edogbo | ★★★ |
| Fineen Wycherley | ★★ |
| Alex Kendellen | ★★ |
| John Hodnett | ★★ |
| Gavin Coombes | ★★★★ |
| Craig Casey | ★★★ |
| Jack Crowley | ★★★ |
| Sean O'Brien | ★★ |
| Alex Nankivell | ★★★ |
| Antoine Frisch | ★★ |
| Calvin Nash | ★★★ |
| Shane Daly | ★★★ |
| Scott Buckley | ★★ |
| Josh Wycherley | ★★ |
| Stephen Archer | ★ |
| Tom Ahern | ★★★ |
| Brian Gleeson | ★★★ |
| Paddy Patterson | ★★★ |
| Rory Scannell | ★★ |
| Ben O'Connor | ★★★ |
