United Rugby Championship: DHL Stormers 23 Ulster 20
ULSTER were left to rue a poor start as they fell to an agonising three-point loss to the DHL Stormers in Cape Town on Saturday afternoon.
But it was events in the final minutes that got everybody talking when Dan McFarland’s side thought they scored a winning try to claim what had looked like at one point, an unlikely win.
Ulster’s Callum Reid thought he was the match-saving hero when his outstretched arm manAged to touch the ball down – or so we thought.
The TMO brought referee Gianluca Gnecchi’s attention to the stadium screen for a possible knock-on infringement against the Ulster replacement prop.
After much deliberation the try was chalked off and the Stormers were awarded a scrum. However, that wasn’t the end of the matter.
The replays seem to show Stormers flanker Hacjivah Dayimani slapping the ball out of Reid’s hands before he could properly ground the ball, but despite the protestations of captain Alan O’Connor, there was to be no change to the original decision and the Stormers held on for the victory.
On that decision, Head Coach Dan McFarland paused for a moment when quizzed on the controversial ending to the game.
“I've got to be really carefully what I say here,” started McFarland.
“As I reviewed it initially, my personal opinion in looking at it was I can’t understand why that’s not a try,” said a clearly frustrated head coach.
“At the moment we’ll wait to hear what they’ve got to say (officials). If it’s not a try, then, if he hasn’t grounded it, why is there not for deliberately knocking the ball out of his hands, a deliberate knock-on.
“I don’t get that but I’ll wait until what they have to say."
The fact that Ulster were still in the hunt for the win in the closing stages after such a horror opening, is testament to the progress that McFarland has made over the last number of years.
Trailing 14-0 after just eight minutes through tries from Paul de Wet and Ledin Zas, it was looking like it was going to be a long afternoon for Ulster.
But a Marty Moore try on 21 minutes brought his side back into contention, and two John Cooney penalties kept Ulster in the hunt as Ulster halved the deficit to seven points at the break.
Stormers out-half Manie Libbok’s fifth successful kick of the day saw his side open up a ten-point lead before Stuart McCloskey’s try on 57 minutes set up a grandstand finish.
Ulster dominated the closing stages and were left to rue a number of missed opportunities, and in the end felt like it was a win that they let slip. But McFarland was more than impressed with his side’s showing, particularly in the second half.
“In my head we won that game. It is what it is. We’ll move on, we don’t have the four points that go with winning a game.
“I felt that we got hit early on by some good play by them, some poor play by us.
“We actually built into the game. We found some areas of the game where we could put them under pressure, particularly in our aerial kicking game and our play close to their line when we were able to generate a little bit of momentum.
“And we built back into the game gradually and through that second half I thought we put together a series of 10 minutes chunks that really wore them down.
“The story would’ve been a different story if we had taken the chances we should’ve done,” added McFarland.
