ULSTER may have scored five tries in their victory at Cardiff, but hooker Rob Herring praised the “great defensive effort” that contributed to the 35-22 win.
“I thought the boys fronted up well on defence, there were some really big hits, and that took the momentum out of the game for Cardiff,” Herring said.
Ulster raced to a 21-3 lead before the break but then had to survive serious pressure from the hosts at the Arms Park, as Herring recalled: “Especially at times when we went down a man and they were camping on our line for a good 15, 20 minutes.
“We said to the guys, `Look, we gotta dig deep here’ and the boys did. We managed to get a few crucial turnovers right on our line, let the pressure off us a bit,” he added.
“Disappointed with the try just before half-time, I thought we were in a really good place, then a silly penalty and they capitalised. But all in all it was a great defensive effort, really proud of the boys.”
In the attacking aspect, Ruan Pienaar was the star, with the forer South Africa scrum-half making a major contribution to three of his side's five tries from Stuart McCloskey, Chris Henry, Charles Piutau, Darren Cave, and Kyle McCall - and he converted all five of them himself.
Sam Warburton was a late withdrawal with a sickness bug, but the Blues overcame this setback to take a fourth-minute lead through Steve Shingler's early penalty. Cardiff continued to dominate the opening quarter with centres Willis Halaholo and Ray Lee-Lo a constant threat to the Ulster defence but the home side failed to take advantage on the scoreboard.
Poor handling and a lack of ball retention was a feature of a stop-start first 20 minutes as both sides struggled to bring any continuity to their play. However, after their slow start, Ulster rapidly improved and Pienaar brought the game to life with a clean break from a scrum on the home 22. Cardiff were then penalised with Blaine Scully yellow-carded before Charles Piutau capitalised by scoring the opening try after 24 minutes.
Four minutes later, McCloskey drifted past some weak defence from Blues to score Ulster's second and with Pienaar converting both, the visitors held a healthy 14-3 lead. Scully returned from the sin-bin but Pienaar continued to have a major influence on the game and when the scrum-half charged down a clearance from Lloyd Williams, McCall was on hand to cross. Pienaar's conversion put Ulster almost out of sight but Kristian Dacey gave the hosts renewed hope by scoring from close range although the Blues still trailed 21-8 at the interval.
Two minutes after the restart, Ulster suffered a blow when Iain Henderson was yellow-carded for a high tackle on Alex Cuthbert but despite some sustained pressure Blues failed to add to their score in the flanker's absence.
Ulster lost another player to the sin-bin when Luke Marshall was penalised for a deliberate offside but despite the excellent efforts of Dacey and Halaholo, the hosts continued to play poorly and squandered chances.
Nicky Robinson came on for Blues after a seven-year absence from the region but there was to be no happy return as Henry finished off a flowing Ulster move to score their bonus-point try. Halaholo and Cuthbert scored late tries for Blues, but it mattered little as a Robinson kick was charged down by Cave to seal victory for the visitors.
Ulster now host Clermont Auvergne in the European Champions Cup and Herring knows they must be much better: “European weeks are massive - us players look forward, really want to be involved in these games," he said.
“Clermont are top in the Top-14 at the moment, looking really good, obviously a quality outfit. But we’re back at home, we put in a good performance [in Cardiff] and hopefully we can carry that momentum on. If we have [the same] penalty count, they’re going to run away with it; we have to clamp down on that.”
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LEINSTER completed a clean sweep of PRO12 wins for the Irish provinces at the weekend with a 28-15 bonus-point victory over Newport.
It took just 41 minutes for Leo Cullen's men to register the bonus point, but a sloppy final half-hour will have frustrated the Leinster management as the men of Gwent closed out the scoring with tries from Pat Howard and replacement Sarel Pretorius.
Connacht warmed up for their Champions Cup double header with Wasps by thrashing Benetton Treviso 47-8 at the Sportsground. Hooker and man-of-the-match Tom McCartney bagged a brace of tries and late inclusion Danie Poolman, who replaced the injured Matt Healy, and Denis Buckley also touched down for a 28-3 half-time lead.
With their bonus point secured, the westerners added two more tries by the hour-mark from John Cooney and Quinn Roux, before replacements Vittorio Flammini and Jack Carty swapped scores in a scrappy final-quarter.
