ULSTER HEAD COACH Dan McFarland rued a combination of injuries and failing to adapt to referee Ben Whitehouse following their 33-20 defeat to Glasgow Warriors.
The major worry is at fly half, where Ulster faced a double whammy of setbacks. Substitute Jake Flanner hobbled off in the warm-up and starter Billy Burns departed after 19 minutes with a head knock that kept him out of the rest of the game after he failed his HIA.
Both are probably unavailable for the visit of Edinburgh to Belfast next Saturday. It leaves McFarland, who went into the game with 14 on the injury list, with a problem to solve. Nathan Doak stepped into the breach last night, but the coach admitted the loss had contributed to their problems.
“We we lost our replacemen 10 (Flannery) in the warm up and Billy Burns then had to go off. We have to play with a guy who hadn’t practised at 10 all week. That was always going to make for a tough game
“I thought we stuck in well defensively in that first half but it was disappointing that in the end the game went away from us,”
Ulster led for most of that opening 40 minutes and were level at the break, only to concede soon after the teams returned. Glasgow, whose bonus-point win means they overtook Leinster to go top of the URC table, then pulled clear.
Ulster’s problems had started before half time, however. After getting string of early penalties, they found more and more decisions going against them, conceding 12 penalties overall. They were not, however, always sure what they were doing wrong and so didn’t know how to change the pattern.
“It didn’t happen suddenly, it was a gradual process of us not working out what the referee wanted,” McFarland said. “We couldn’t understand what was going on at the breakdown where there were a number of penalties given against us and a number of times we thought we should have been given the penalty and didn’t get it.
“It all became a bit confusing. But, fair play to Glasgow, while we were physically on top in that first 30 minutes of the game, it swapped over and they were physically on top for the rest.
“We didn’t much ball and defending all the time is a difficult thing to do. The referee was at odds with the way that we were trying to play the game and as a consequence, they had a lot of ball. That kind of thing happens and it became difficult for us.”