Burns boot rewards clever Ulster gameplan

Ulster's John Cooney and Joe McCarthy of Leinster.

URC: Leinster 21 Ulster 22 

Ulster started this New Year’s Eve interpro slumming it in eighth place in the league table. They made the trip home to Belfast having claimed standout wins against both the Top 14 and the URC leaders in the space of the last three weekends.

This is the kind of thing that confuses and confounds when it comes to the northern province. Dan McFarland’s side has long been good enough to mix it with the very best on their day. The problem is their ‘days’ have been too sporadic.

This at least marks a third win on the trot after a trio of successive losses. It's a win for what was a strong team on paper against a much-changed Leinster selection and it leapfrogged them into fourth place in the URC, but the Ulster head coach has sights set higher.

“We’re aiming to be one of the top teams in Europe,” he said. “We’ve been there or thereabouts. It’s pretty tough. We’ve been working on a number of things this season in the last few weeks, played very well on occasion and squeezed out two big results the last two weeks.” 

This was a game that could and, maybe should, have got away from them.

The visitors had just 38% possession, 24% territory and they made twice as many tackles as an opponent that just didn’t have enough of a ruthless streak and whose blitz defence under Jacques Nienaber was repeatedly exposed out wide by the brilliance of Billy Burns’ boot.

The out-half set up three first-half tries, two for the superb Nick Timoney and another for Jacob Stockdale, with either a grubber or a chip kick in behind the outer reaches of the Leinster rush defence in a superb first-half of rugby.

It was a clever and rewarding approach, not least given Leinster had made 14 changes from the side that started against Munster on St Stephen’s Day and then had to make two late changes, one in the back three when Jimmy O’Brien was stood down.

“I don’t think that it is new knowledge,” said McFarland. “If you play the kind of defence that Leinster are going to play this year, they are susceptible to kicking. There was some high quality and accurate kicking, Billy is one of the best in the game at that. I genuinely mean that.

“Yeah, it was a plan but you have to have variety in that, be able to do it different ways and not be obvious. Setting it up and planning it is difficult but those guys understand that. They have to execute it well. There was certainly one (try) where Billy was smart, understood where our players were going to be and out the ball there, even when it is not structured.”

Leinster hit back with tries of their own, from Cian Healy and Rob Russell in the first period and another from Joe McCarthy on the hour, but the visitors defended brilliantly at times at a ground buffeted by sprawling rain from start to finish.

Burns aside there were encouraging individual efforts from the likes of the recently-arrived World Cup winning loosehead prop Steven Kitshoff, Stockdale on the wing and the effective back row pairing of Sean Refell and Timoney.

It’s over 13 months since Timoney won the last of his three Ireland caps, against Fiji, and the sight of the Dubliner, Stockdale, the Irish-qualified Refell and more of the Ulster branch putting in these performances will be warmly welcomed by Andy Farrell.

The Ulster contribution to the national team fell away and into a precipitous decline at the end of the last World Cup cycle. Only four travelled to France last year so the province’s upturn in fortunes is coming at a favourable time with the Six Nations on the horizon.

“He's been really good for us, consistent, so powerful on the ball, excellent defensively, good tackler, very strong guy,” said McFarland of Timoney. ”He's got to be there or thereabouts hasn't he? He has been for the last while, I know Andy's been thinking about him.” 

The immediate question for Ulster as they turn their thoughts back to the Champions Cup is where their ceiling is. McFarland certainly doesn’t think that this is it, despite his delight at winning at such a notoriously tough venue against opposition of this calibre.

He spoke of heaping pressure on themselves with poor exits from their 22 and having to rely on their defence too much as a result. He touched on better game management and getting the right numbers to the breakdown and how they did this better after the break.

There is more in them yet.

LEINSTER: C Frawley; T O’Brien, L Turner, R Henshaw, R Russell; S Prendergast, J Gibson-Park; C Healy, D Sheehan, T Clarkson; J Jenkins, J McCarthy; R Baird, W Connors, C Doris.

Replacements: J van der Flier for Connors, M Alalatoa for Clarkson and J Boyle for Healy (all 49); R Molony for McCarthy and H Byrne for Prendergast (both 62); J Conan for Doris (68); L McGrath for Gibson-Park (78).

ULSTER: W Addison; R Baloucoune, L Marshall, S McCloskey, J Stockdale; B Burns, J Cooney; S Kitshoff, R Herring, T O’Toole; K Treadwell, I Henderson; M Rea, S Refell, N Timoney.

Replacements: T Stewart for Herring (49); M Lowry for Baloucoune (51); D Ewers for Refell and A O’Connor for Henderson (both 63); A Warwick for Kitshoff and S Wilson for O’Toole (both 64); N Doak for Burns (75).

Referee: F Murphy (IRFU).