FOR THE SECOND straight Saturday night, the losing coach at the RDS came out of the dressing room massively frustrated at refereeing decisions which denied a late score reversal in front of the south stand.
Last week, it was Gregor Townsend calling up small decisions which had a big effect on the result.
Last night, it was Joe Schmidt who was left disgruntled at the inconsistency of the man in the middle; and his reluctance to award no more than a penalty when the infringements began to stack up against Ulster in the first half and in the magnificent final five-metre war.
“I think five penalties in the first half for the same offence,” the Leinster coach said with a puff of the cheeks, “all we ask is consistency.”
“Up in Ravenhill, off the first scrum (of a sequence), they got a penalty try. I think there were four scrums that went down in that last bracket of play and none of them were from our side.”
Schmidt would later add: “I’d probably put up the try that was awarded in Ravenhill against the scrums that were there at the end of the game and ask the question of anyone, ‘is that consistent?’“That’s all we can ask from referees and that’s a massive part of our disappointment.”
With his fellow north island Kiwi long disappeared back into the changing room, Mark Anscombe bristled upon hearing Leinster wanted a penalty try.
“Do they? Why?” He asked his inquisitor with a deadpan voice, arms folded in victory before he brought out a gripe of his own.
“Like every game, at the end everyone sees things in a different way. One thing we spoke about before the game was the amount of obstruction and taking out of players they [Leinster] do. One guy got pinged today, but I could show you half a dozen examples of it.
“I thought our discipline was outstanding on the line and I didn’t see anything there that warranted a penalty try.”
Before he left the scene, though, Schmidt did find time for plenty of compliments about Ulster on top of complaints about George Clancy’s performance.
Internal review
“The disappointment will always be internal:” The Leinster coach, beginning to put emphasis back on his team, said: “We needed to play better, we needed to speed our ball up and we didn’t manage to do that.
“To be fair to Ulster, they got off the line really well, they defended really physically and they carried the ball really well. They played off some nice quick ruck-ball which had us scrambling. And, when you’re scrambling, you’re always liable to be breached somewhere.
“We managed to scramble back off some of those line-breaks, but other ones, they managed to get over the try-line twice.”
In the end, two tries to nil proved the difference and Ulster end Leinster’s winning streak just where it started.
