THIRD TIME UNLUCKY

The signs had been there, and Ulster finally paid for their wastefulness.

Against the Dragons and Glasgow, in spite of Ulster’s inability to get over the line more times than they did, Les Kiss’ men got away with spurning their opportunities. The Scarlets were a lot less forgiving and, unlike the Dragons and Glasgow, had the quality in their squad to hold Ulster out and wrap up four points they deserved.

Or maybe to put it better, four points that Ulster didn’t deserve.

You hoped that with a full week of training together that Ulster would look a lot more competitive than what they did in their previous two games, even with Rob Herring out injured and with Ruan Pienaar sat on the bench, but in the end their defence was too narrow to cope with the dangerous running of DTH van der Merwe and Michael Collins, and their composure in the “red zone” was once again non-existent.

By the end of the match even the scrum, which had been perfectly level up until this stage, had begun to struggle and you knew that the hosts were not going to go the full length of the pitch to win the game. As much as you willed them to, Ulster never even crossed their own 22 metre line before Stuart Olding lost the ball, ending a frustrating afternoon.

And yet that was exactly what the writing on the wall was suggesting was coming unless Ulster improved. The Dragons and Glasgow games should have been enough warning that unless there was vast improvement then Ulster would slip up somewhere along the line, and now they have handed four points to a play-off rival as the race for the top four heats up.

It’s a costly four points to lose.

It is impossible to pinpoint any individuals on whom to rest the blame, this was a team failure. How a team with aspirations to finish in the top four of the PRO12 managed to spend two long spells camped on their opponents’ five metre line only to fail to score a single point from either attack is ridiculous and is where most of their issues stem from, with the weak-as-water defence following close behind.

I can’t quite work out if it is funny how the exact same issues that plagued Ulster against the Dragons two weeks ago still plague them now (and have finally cost them), or if it’s simply just painful. What has been done to rectify those issues is also unclear – we still persist with the same tactics in the opposition 22 that are clearly not working and our defence is starting to leak tries at an increased rate, something that was saving us in previous encounters.

No longer is the Kingspan Stadium a fortress either. Munster have stormed it already this season, Saracens took five points from it (albeit in exceptional circumstances) and both the Dragons and Glasgow came close to taking a result away from it too. Not for the first time this season the atmosphere inside the Kingspan Stadium fell a long way short of what we know it can be, and it can be argued that was reflected onto the pitch.

All is not lost, however.

Despite the defeat, Ulster still reside in fourth place in the league and they still have a favourable run-in towards the end of the season with two games against Zebre still to come as well as the potential to harm Connacht and Leinster when they make the trip to the Kingspan Stadium in April. So to write them off as top four contenders on this one defeat would definitely be an over the top reaction.

No, Sunday’s result was not ideal, but if anything it will be a reality check for this Ulster team – they are not invincible and if they continue to put in these sub-standard performances then they will be found out, especially whenever they don’t have the home comforts of the Kingspan Stadium to fall back on. This weekend’s trip to the Cardiff Blues will be a real test of Ulster’s mental resolve.

For that trip, Les Kiss will need to work the players hard to get back into a state of mind where they are in a position to overcome the Blues on Sunday. If they can then the demons of a week previous will be exorcised and with a few other results potentially going their way then Ulster will be right back in the mix at the top of the table.

A top two finish is still there for us, we just need to knuckle down and grab it.