FOR THE THIRD week in a row, Ulster’s players stared at the screen in the analysis room at Kingspan Stadium on Monday dissecting the bones of a harrowing defeat, looking for what they need to do to finally get back in the win column.
Whatever comes from EPCR’s investigation into why the province’s Heineken Champions Cup game against La Rochelle was moved from Belfast to Dublin on Saturday, it doesn’t change the facts of what happened on the pitch at the Aviva Stadium as their turgid run continues.
In the first half, they were abysmal as Ronan O’Gara’s defending champions racked up 29 unanswered points to effectively clinch the win before Ulster had even touched the ball in the opposition 22. Out-half Antoine Hastoy pulled the strings and Jonathan Danty was a one-man wrecking ball as Ulster were kept scoreless for the third half in a row.
The second half was better, granted, and to take two points away from the tie was much better than anybody would have hoped sitting in the dressing room at half-time. But the damage had already been done, and Pierre Bourgarit’s early second-half try was the one that sealed the deal.
For Nick Timoney, the doubts that are dogging the team right now are ones that extend to a personal level, too. While individuals can perform well in losing efforts, it’s hard to look at your performance objectively in the aftermath of – when you extend their run back to their loss to Leinster – four halves of very underwhelming rugby.
“It’s hard to tell. When the team isn’t going well you have to take personal responsibility. It’s certainly not crisis mode and I don’t think I have been playing particularly poorly, but I haven’t been winning those games either,” says the Ireland flanker.
“Sometimes it is hard to separate the individual from the team. If we’re losing I am never going to be happy with how I’m playing because I didn’t do enough for us to win.
“I don’t think I’m in a terrible place but I am certainly looking to improve.”
As a member of Ulster’s back row, the number of penalties the team are conceding, while a whole squad effort, will no doubt be a concern for the openside flanker, who is tasked with being the team’s workhorse in the trenches on most occasions.
Ulster have leaked 31 penalties in their last two games alone, with 11 of those coming in the first half against La Rochelle, and that has led to points on the board, too. Prior to Saturday’s second half, in their previous four halves Ulster were outscored 96-7 and conceded 12 tries.
That equally poses questions of a defence that has now allowed over 35 points in five of their ten games this season, and Timoney admits they know where their problem areas lie if they are to get back on the right track when they head to the Sportsground on Friday evening to take on Connacht.
“The top teams apply pressure to you and that causes penalties, but also some of it is frustration,” continues Timoney, addressing the disciplinary problems that have also led to four yellow cards in their last three outings.
“When you feel like things aren’t going your way there is a tendency to maybe try and solve problems yourself and that can lead to more penalties instead of actually trying to fix anything.
“There has been a bit of that and, with a bit of pressure, things can spiral. It is important for us this week to trust the things we said we are going to do and not necessarily trying to solve things ourselves. There are loads of aspects to it but it is certainly not unfixable.
“But you never want to concede as many points as we have done over the last couple of weeks.
There is also the aspect when you are giving away that many penalties and giving away the ball cheaply then you are going to be doing a lot of defending, and when you are doing a lot of defending you are going to miss more tackles.
“Certainly, we want to improve on our defence over the last couple of weeks. A large chunk of that, we could make it easier for ourselves by being smarter the way we put ourselves in the game.
“Everything is interconnected. When you put yourself under huge pressure and things seem like they are going badly, it makes everything harder. We have had a bit of a wobble for 180 minutes of rugby where it seemed we just couldn’t get things going.”
But they did improve in that second half at the Aviva Stadium, and the hope is that they can carry that momentum into their clash with Connacht and apply it to the full game, finally getting back on the horse at just the right time to invigorate their league campaign.
Accordingly, head coach Dan McFarland has gone full bore, putting faith in the majority of the team that spearheaded that second half comeback by making just three changes to the team that faced Stade Rochelais – including switching Timoney to number eight – in a bid to put at least four points on the board.
But for Timoney, he insists they won’t be taking any moral victories from what happened in Dublin a week ago. The currency of sport is wins, and that’s all he’s concerned with.
“I never want to be the kind of person who is taking huge consolation from coming back and getting close,” he retorts.
“Ultimately we were pretty dominant in the second half against the champions of Europe and we were pretty dominant against the runners up in Europe three weeks ago. In between, all sorts went wrong and it felt like if it could go wrong it did, but that stuff just doesn’t randomly happen by accident against good teams like that.
“It sort of shows we are not a million miles away, if we can get things to click a bit more for us and it certainly felt like things were clicking for us in the second half against La Rochelle.
“Scoring four tries to one in the second half isn’t something that is a fluke against a world class team, and they are just not going to give that to you.”
CONNACHT: (15-9) Tiernan O’Halloran; John Porch, Tom Farrell, Bundee Aki, Mack Hansen; Jack Carty (captain), Caolin Blade; (1-8) Denis Buckley, Shane Delahunt, Finlay Bealham; Josh Murphy, Niall Murray; Oisín Dowling, Conor Oliver, Cian Prendergast.
Replacements: Dave Heffernan, Jordan Duggan, Dominic Robertson-McCoy, Shamus Hurley-Langton, Jarrad Butler, Kieran Marmion, David Hawkshaw, Adam Byrne.
ULSTER: (15-9) Mike Lowry; Ethan McIlroy, Luke Marshall, Stuart McCloskey, Rob Lyttle; Nathan Doak, John Cooney; (1-8) Rory Sutherland, Tom Stewart, Marty Moore; Alan O’Connor, Iain Henderson (captain); David McCann, Marcus Rea, Nick Timoney.
Replacements: John Andrew, Eric O’Sullivan, Gareth Milasinovich, Sam Carter, Greg Jones, David Shanahan, Jake Flannery, Stewart Moore.
Referee: Frank Murphy (Ireland)
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