Ulster head coach Richie Murphy admitted it was a “difficult day for our back line” as his side fell to another late European collapse, this time conceding 38 unanswered points in a 38-10 loss to the Leicester Tigers at Welford Road.
Having shipped 61 points in Toulouse and suffered a second half drubbing at home to Bordeaux Begles, it was another painful Champions Cup lesson for the province as they were powerless to stop the Leicester juggernaut, the Tigers running in four tries in the second half alone to result in a lopsided scoreline.
The toughest part was that the mistakes that led to the hosts’ tries came largely off Ulster errors, particularly as they struggled to deal with the high ball and the influence of the exceptional England international Freddie Steward in the air.
Having led by ten points after just eight minutes, it looked like it could be a promising night for Ulster but instead a ramshackle back line – that ended with Jack Murphy and Rory Telfer playing significant minutes on their European debuts and scrum-half Nathan Doak at full-back – were cut apart in the bitter cold at Welford Road.
And Murphy was left to reflect on what was another harsh lesson for his young side which has left their Champions Cup hopes by the slimmest of threads, the head coach admitting that his side couldn’t cope with the pressure the Tigers put them under.
“Very difficult second half. At 10-0 up I thought we were very much in the game, causing Leicester a bit of trouble off the line-out and playing off the back. We had a couple opportunities early on and didn’t capitalise on that,” sighed Murphy.
“The game got away from us in and around the second half. We didn’t deal with the high ball well enough and that created broken field and Leicester getting on top. A difficult day for our back line, really.
“We could have caught the high balls that were kicked at us and the momentum changed around those points. There were a couple moments before half-time where the two Leicester scores come off the back of mistakes we’ve made.
“The high ball game, the kicking game they had was superior to ours. Our fielding, which is normally very good, wasn’t at the level it needed to be tonight.
“The pressure comes on, the guys feel they need to be because they’re behind, but the more they play the more trouble they play into. It’s probably a little bit of experience in that regard, when to take the right opportunity to play. We want to play, but you can’t play off the back of slow ball with a full (defensive) line in front of you. Turn over the ball and one or two scores led from that.
“It is what it is, we’ve always known this was a difficult group we were in, the situation that we’re in, these players will learn from that. You’ve just got to move on.”
Ulster had been in the driving seat when they led 10-0 after a Doak penalty and Nick Timoney’s try and they were matching the ferocious Tigers pack blow for blow for the most part, however that would be as good as it got for the visitors as Josh Bassett’s second try of a hat-trick pulled Leicester ahead on the stroke of half-time and they would fail to even breach the Leicester 22 after the break.
“Early on, I thought the forwards did a good job of getting us into the game. Ten-nil up after 15 minutes, we’re right in the game. Even at half-time we felt that there was one score in it and we had a good chance, but we didn’t look after the ball well enough, we put no attack together in the second half, no pressure on them at their end. Ultimately that’s how the score blew out to 38 points,” added Murphy.
“When we do get a little bit of front foot ball, we’ve got some big boys out in that back line. We can win collisions. The basis of our game is try to play to space or apply pressure and ultimately we didn’t apply enough pressure today.”
All attention now turns to a pivotal game against the Exeter Chiefs at Ravenhill on Friday which has implications aplenty as not only do Ulster still have a wafer thin chance of reaching the Champions Cup knockouts should they pick up a bonus point win and overturn a 56-point differential to the Sharks, who are in Bordeaux on Sunday, but a win of any kind would at least guarantee them a place in the Challenge Cup last-16 in the spring.
However, rather than look at it from an implication perspective, the team instead are choosing to look at it from a much simpler aspect: putting points on the board having been beaten in their first three games.
“We’re going into Exeter next week, the only thing we want to do is beat Exeter. We want to win a game in this competition,” continued Murphy.
“The Bordeaux game, I thought for 60 minutes we were really, really competitive. We were ahead on the 60-minute mark even though the scoreboard blew out. Today, 25 maybe 30 minutes, we’re well in that game. We’re causing really good teams problems with a very young team. We’ve just got to try and get ready, try and beat Exeter.”
Murphy also revealed that full-back Ethan McIlroy sustained a “serious knee injury” that forced his withdrawal early in the first half and that it “doesn’t look great” but confirmed that captain Iain Henderson’s withdrawal early into the second half was pre-planned.
“We’re in a situation where we’ve as many as six or seven back three players out, we have two international centres out and two international hookers and another load of players who sit around the middle section of our squad (out),” pointed out the head coach.
“Towards the end of the game we had a 20-year-old out-half, two 22-year-old centres, a 21-year-old full-back/winger and a scrum-half playing full-back. It’s a disjointed set-up at the moment but the great thing is we’re used to it because we haven’t been able to select from a full deck of players all year, so you just roll on to the next week.”