Perspective is everything. Toulouse’s long range scores across their last-16 tie with Ulster were either flashes of creative genius or examples of poor defending, depending on who you talk to.
Between Romain Ntamack’s breakaway try in the first leg in Toulouse, Thomas Ramos’ long-range effort on Saturday night in Belfast and Ntamack’s intercept on the same night, Ulster feel like they gifted a number of scores that cost them the tie. After all, 99 points were scored by both sides across the two legs, the difference between them one miserly digit.
Toulouse's first try on Saturday came when Ntamack elegantly danced past Rob Herring in midfield. Mr Support Line himself, Antoine Dupont, was on his inside but still needed one more runner for the score, Ramos obliging from fullback. Five minutes later, Ntamack came flying out of the line to pick off a John Cooney pass and race away under the posts from his own 22.
Toulouse brilliance or Ulster negligence? Perhaps a bit of both? You can probably guess the Ulster point of view: “We gifted them two tries through poor pieces of defence,” said Dan McFarland after the agonising defeat. “Letting guys through on inside shoulders or (giving) an intercept pass in the space of five minutes, ultimately that was a big difference in the game.
“Teams do that obviously but if you want to win at this level against sides the quality of Toulouse, you can’t afford to make those mistakes.”
The Ramos try especially was a frustrating one to concede from Iain Henderson’s point of view. Ulster had drilled during the week the importance of nullifying Dupont and Ntamack’s threat on support lines. “The more we can be loaded on his (Ntamack’s) inside shoulder the less likely he can do that,” explained the Ulster skipper. “Maybe there were a couple of opportunities over the last two games where we could have been better covering the inside.”
“The pair of them (Dupont and Ntamack) are one of the best combos in the world at scoring those types of tries so it’s a tough challenge to do that. On the whole I thought, apart from that, we played quite well.”
He is right. Barring those momentary lapses in the face of Toulouse brilliance, Ulster fronted up well, particularly in the tight exchanges around the maul and set-piece. They were also ruthless in exposing Toulouse’ willingness to implode and gift opportunities inside their own 22.
After a pair of early yellows for Robert Baloucoune and Dimitri Delibes, the former for taking out Anthony Jelonch in the air, the latter for lifting Ethan McIlroy beyond the horizontal, it was Ulster who settled first.
Antoine Dupont showed his he human; he eats, breathes and throws ill-judged offloads just like the rest of us. His poor attempt metres from his own line gifted Ulster the platform and they did not waste it, Ethan McIlroy crashing over once James Hume stepped past one man and offloaded beyond another. Moments later another poorly-timed offload, this one from Selevasio Tolofua, led to an offside call and Cooney extending the lead from the tee.
Then came that double flurry of Toulouse tries that frustrated McFarland so much, but Ulster still managed to respond. A scrum penalty conceded by the visitors allowed Burns to pin his forwards into the danger zone. After their initial good work at the maul, another Burns kick, this time across the park under advantage, looked to be too high for the chasing McIlroy but his finish that involved an acrobatic leap in the corner was nothing short of spectacular.
Ulster were down by three on the night at half-time, but crucially still three ahead on aggregate. The back-and-forth nature of the contest slowed after the break, no points came until Cooney’s penalty in the 53rd minute. Ulster’s attack stalled as Toulouse cleaned up their discipline and earned a number of breakdown penalties of their own through Jelonch.
“The quality of their tackles and their physicality... they’re enormous human beings but they’re also excellent rugby players and when they hit you, they hit you hard,” admitted McFarland. “If you get hit in phase play like that, they can really stymie your attack, and that happened a couple of times.
“There were a couple of turnovers in there but our turnover game was probably better than their turnover game. You always expect a couple of turnovers in a game just because of the nature of it and you can’t be on it the whole time. In general, I thought we caused them some problems.”
McFarland had no issue with the red card for Tom O’Toole. The Ulster tighthead was given his marching orders after making contact with the head of Jelonch, just moments after coming on. The officials could have punished Herring too, his challenge in the same collision was arguably more dangerous with a higher degree of force and a tucked arm.
That gave Toulouse 15 minutes to attack against 14 men. That was too much time. Dupont switched to outhalf for that period, putting some searing speed onto the ball that was impossible to deal with before crashing over for the winning score with five minutes remaining.
The talismanic scrumhalf will soon return to these shores. A quarter-final with Munster is the reward for his exploits, even if Ed Sheehan shunts him away from the Thomond Park stage.
