BKT United Rugby Championship: Ulster 40 Dragons 19
A first glance at the 40-19 scoreline would suggest that this was a routine win for Dan McFarland’s side. But this was anything but routine as lowly Welsh region, Dragons, made Ulster dig deep for their bonus-point win.
A 19-point lead 10 minutes into the second half was slashed when the Dragons crossed for two-tries in as many minutes with less than an hour evaporated on the clock.
Suddenly the gap was seven and fears of another Champions Cup hangover began to creep into the psyche of the Ulster fan base.
But a Nick Timoney effort steadied the ship somewhat and a penalty try in the dying minutes rubber stamped another home win for the Ulstermen.
But again, the star of the show again was Tom Stewart.
The hooker has been scoring tries for fun this season and a stunning hat-trick on Friday took his tally to 17 tries in as many games.
The 22-year-old put the finishing touches to two first half mauls before showing all the finesse of an international winger to score in the left corner early in the second half.
While scoring six tries and racking up 40 points may point to a near perfect performance the reality was anything but.
Poor defending allowed the Dragons to breach the Ulster try line on three occasions, while in attack Ulster were guilty of forcing the play more than once which led to the home team coughing up possession rather cheaply.
“It was bit of a mixed bag,” was assistant head coach Dan Soper’s assessment after the game.
“Some really excellent stuff at times and other times we were a bit loose. Yeah, so it was a mixed bag, but we got the job done and got five points, so we are pleased with that.
“We were probably at times not quite clinical enough with the ball. Gilly’s (Craig Gilroy) got over the line twice and both tries ruled out. (But) there were lots of good things and evidence of things we have been working on, but we were probably not quite clinical enough from the attack side of things.”
Post match reaction from the hat-trick hero! pic.twitter.com/7HRJPbxExP
— Ulster Rugby (@UlsterRugby) April 14, 2023
But it wasn’t all doom and gloom on the attack front. David McCann’s opening try in the 8th minute came from a combination of powerful running and delicate passing from Stuart McCloskey and Jacob Stockdale.
On the other side of the ball, Soper’s end of game report also fell into the could do better category.
“Talking to Dinger there, (defence coach Johnny Bell), he was disappointed with some of the defence, couple of really good sets after half time but I know he was pretty disappointed with just how we gave them access and we probably didn’t exit out of our area just as well as we would have liked as well, particularly given the conditions turned out to be pretty good.”
Ulster were dealt a double blow when they lost props Eric O’Sullivan and Tom O’Toole to injury within the opening 23 minutes, with Irish international O’Toole seemingly being the biggest concern. But Soper says that it is too early to be predicting a timescale of absence in an area where Ulster’s resources are already stretched.
O’Toole did leave on crutches but as Soper explains, this was merely a precautionary measure.
“I haven’t heard from the medics exactly on how bad Tom is. He’s on crutches for the first 48 hours to make sure no more damage is done.”
And thanks to Munster’s unexpected win in South Africa over the Stormers, Ulster go into the final weekend of the season knowing that a home semi-final is now within their grasp.
