ULSTER CAME TO the RDS with a plan this evening and pulled it off in impressive fashion, with Billy Burns’ kicking instrumental as Dan McFarland’s side recorded a 22-21 win over Leinster in Dublin.
Ulster crossed for three first-half tries on a wet night in Dublin 4, with the boot of Burns playing a central role in all three scores – the out-half repeatedly finding space behind the Leinster defence as Nick Timoney (2) and Jacob Stockdale crossed in the first half.
“I don’t think that it is new knowledge. If you play the kind of defence that Leinster are going to play this year, they are susceptible to kicking,” said Ulster head coach Dan McFarland.
There was some high quality and accurate kicking, Billy is one of the best in the game at that; I genuinely mean that.
“Yeah, definitely it was a plan but you have to have variety in that, be able to do it different ways and not be obvious. Setting it up and planning it is difficult but those guys understand that. They have to execute it well. There was certainly one of them (tries) which Billy was smart, understood where our players were going to be and out the ball there, even when it is not structured.
“I am not claiming to give you new information here. Teams that play against South Africa would have done the same thing. Teams that blitz hard off the line are susceptible to attacking kicks, but you have to be able to execute them. Ours came off today and Billy is one of the best at it.”
After fighting their way back into the game Leinster had opportunites to win it in the final quarter but Ulster held out for a victory which lifted them to fourth in the URC table.
“Obviously very happy, it is the best challenge in the URC coming to Leinster and to come away with a victory and the manner of it is very pleasing,” McFarland added.
“The first half we didn’t exit properly, and we heaped a lot of pressure on ourselves. We had to rely on aspects of our game that we didn’t really want to have to rely on defensively to be able to keep Leinster out.
“Leinster are a really good team, one of the things that Jacques (Nienaber) has brought in is that relentlessness, particularly at the breakdown. You saw that in La Rochelle. They played La Rochelle in conditions like this and they are ferocious at the breakdown, multiple numbers. They know that you are not going to move the ball wide because it is so dangerous to do that in your own half in the conditions.
“We got caught with that, not aware enough, probably not committing numbers to the breakdown. We changed that at half-time. It was still messy, it becomes like a free-for-all in that area, we dealt with it much better in that’s second half.
“To me that was a really gutsy performance from us interspersed with three brilliant tries. We took our points when we needed to take them. The rest of it was clench your teeth, get down in the trenches and do the work that you have to do. That’s still a victory, isn’t it?”
