Danielli: We didn’t play as well as we should

SATURDAY’S Magners League game at Ravenhill was effectively decided by the two first-half tries touched down by Ulster’s Scottish international wing Simon Danielli.

Munster were guilty of the same sort of generosity that saw them gift three tries to Perpignan in the Heineken Cup game at Thomond Park last month but Danielli wasn’t complaining.

“The first was a charge down, the ball fell into my hands, I spun to the left and there was no one in front of me so it was happy days,” he said. “For the second, all credit goes to Trimby (Andrew Trimble) because he looked like he was running into four players only to come out the other side and feed outside and it was a straight run to the line.

“It was great to get the win but it’s a strange sort of dressing room. We’ve just beaten Munster but it’s not the sort of happy dressing-room that you’d expect, given that we didn’t play as well as we should. We probably played better against Leinster and lost.”

Trimble, the Ireland centre and wing, was voted man of the match and fully concurred with Danielli’s view.

“Last week we played quite well and lost and tonight it was the other way around,” he admitted. “We’re a little bit disappointed at the way we let Munster get back into the game after going 15-0 ahead. But we hung in there for the win and that’s the most important thing. We needed to show up tonight and we did. We went 15 points up, we should have put them away and we didn’t. I’d say the first half an hour was quite entertaining but after that maybe everybody should have gone home.”

“To be brutally honest, I’m really pleased that we played ugly and won,” Ulster coach Brian McLaughlin pointed out. “Last week we played exceptionally well against Leinster and got nothing out of it, tonight, other than one smashing try from a lineout, one great piece of opportunism from Simon Danielli and a penalty to put us 15-0 up, we didn’t kick on from that.

“We did give away a soft score but I think in general our defence was good and certainly we knuckled down in the last 10 minutes under ferocious pressure and came away with the win.

“Earlier in the season, if we had played the way we did tonight, we wouldn’t have got out of jail. It was a good win for us in that we didn’t play well and usually when we don’t perform at our optimum level, we lose. I thought our front-row scrummaged exceptionally well, and the pack in general, and it stood to us in the last 10-15 minutes. We were under pressure then and our scrum dug in and put them under pressure which eventually ended up with us relieving and getting out of our own 22.

“You’ve got to give credit to Munster for the way they played tonight, the way they put us under pressure in the first half after they were 15-0 down. They stuck at it and came back at us, which Munster sides do. They had a very young team out and I think they can be very proud of their display.”