Sean Farrell reports from the Aviva Stadium
ULSTER HEAD COACH Dan McFarland moved to take heat off Jacob Stockdale and onto his own shoulders in the wake of his side’s gut-wrenching 21-18 loss to Leinster.
Stockdale suffered a rare blip on his meteoric rise to stardom, fluffing his lines as he attempted to finish a sensational individual burst after 46 minutes of an enthralling Heineken Champions Cup quarter-final.
The wing was already over the try-line when he leaned down attempting to ground the ball with his left hand, but the spillage was confirmed by the TMO.
A try would have given Ulster 11-18 ahead with a John Cooney conversion to come, instead Leinster grabbed the game’s next try and nudged ahead.
“There are not many people in the world who could beat that many players, to even get in the position to put the ball down,” McFarland said after noting that he had been asked about Stockdale’s error four times on his tour of media duties before even reaching the press conference.
“He’s disappointed, but that’s not the reason we lost the game. I’d say the key points in the first half were: our collision work, contact work wasn’t good enough. That’s on me, I’m the coach of that area.”
The 22-year-old was visibly dejected as the full-time whistle blew, clearly taking his error to heart. However, McFarland reiterated that it was his star back’s own brilliance that brought about the opportunity for error.
“He’s really disappointed. I said the same thing as I said to you, only one season he was disappointed is because he was able to get into that position.
“It’s probably three millimeters off his finger. It’s a small thing, but there are so many other small things that could have sent the game in other directions.”
A relieved Leo Cullen agreed there were more factors involved in the game than one error from Stockdale.
“You could see it was a bit ugly, the grounding… thankfully he had lost control,” Cullen says of the TMO review in his favour.
“But it’s not great for us to rely on the opposition like that. It’s part of the frustration we have with ourselves. We could have solved it a bit better on the edge, so he doesn’t get away in the first place.
“There are so many parts of the game — it hasn’t cost us today, it’s cost Ulster, though it’s just one incident.”
