O’Connell: Reds lacked ‘cup rugby’ mentality
O’Connell felt his side had enough possession and territory to win the game but came up short in too many departments in the final quarter.
But he agreed that their dreadful start provided the visitors with a massive confidence boost.
“It’s very disappointing, after all the hard work to get there. I don’t know if we’ve ever started a game like that in all the time I’ve been involved and go 19-0 down in such a short period of time. It left us with an awful lot to do and gave them a lot of belief.
“They kicked well from inside their own half. Ian Humphreys knocked over a drop-goal but I think (referee Romain) Poite had us for offside in the middle of the field ... and they scored a good try. Nineteen points is a long way to come back from. We probably had the possession and territory to do it. So to score one try with the amount of ball we had was very frustrating.”
The early points Munster shipped were critical, though they rallied well.
“It seemed too much to make up,” said O’Connell. “But we got that ten points before half-time, we started the second half pretty well, we had a lot of intensity in what we were doing but we weren’t making the inroads we would have liked.
“Fair play to them their defence was good. We continued to make a few mistakes, a few errors, which relieved the pressure on them.
“I think we probably had enough to get over the 19 points but we just weren’t accurate enough with the ball.”
Home supporters were unhappy with referee Poite and O’Connell was clearly unhappy with some of his decisions.
“They certainly had guys on the ball, and it was very hard to get at their poachers with the amount of guys they had on that side on the ruck. That was very frustrating. Some of the penalties were legitimate, certainly. Some of them, it was hard to get at their men because there were so many of their men on our side of the ball. We challenged him (the referee), and he changed after 25 minutes. I suppose we were struggling at that stage.”
Asked what Munster need to do now, O’Connell said: “As I say, I’ve never been on a team that’s gone 19 points down in a Heineken Cup game. We need to make better decisions and to have the cup rugby mentality which Munster teams have had in the past.
“We’ve had that in the knockout stages and played clever rugby. But I must hold my hand up with some silly penalties, particularly in the first half.
“But you just can’t beat yourself, and we probably beat ourselves a lot at the start of the game, conceding penalties. They were knocking them over and that’s not taking anything away from Ulster – their defence was excellent, they took their opportunities very well.
“We just need to be that little bit more clever. That’s a vital part of the game, not beating yourself — that’s what we didn’t do in the past.
Was it overeagerness? “There’s always overeagerness, everyone’s enthusiastic, everyone is up for it. That’s always the way it’s been. You can’t blame some of the silly mistakes we’ve made on that. It’s been tough losing certain guys but the guys who have come in have done well.
“If you do nothing from these experiences you’ve got to learn from them. It’s going to be a very tough few weeks for us.”
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