Like the rest of the Ulster dressing room, Ruan Pienaar cut a dejected figure following Friday night's 28-17 defeat at the hands of Edinburgh at BT Murrayfield.
Following five straight wins that saw Ulster reach the summit of the Guinness PRO12, a mounting list of injuries and a string of under-par performances have seen the team fall to four defeats in the last five games, and Pienaar admits this is far from satisfactory:
“Physically I don’t think we have fronted up the past couple of weeks. Particularly at the breakdown where we have normally been quite accurate, especially that first five weeks, for some reason we are struggling with that now. We are a team that wants to play with tempo, create momentum and get our exciting outside backs going - that’s something that we’re struggling with at times. It looks like we just lack a bit of creativity, but I know this squad is better than that and we’ll keep working hard so hopefully things will turn around quickly.”
Reflecting on Friday night’s game, the scrum-half felt the performance was not reflective of the team’s preparation in the week leading up to the game:
“We came here with one mission, and that was to get four or five points and obviously we let ourselves down. The first half was nowhere close to where we need to be. We felt like we prepared well during the week but we just struggled to get things going. I felt that we physically weren’t up there and got bullied a little bit by a hungry Edinburgh team. It’s a massive disappointment but we’ll keep our heads up, keep working hard to get back to the level that we know we’re capable of.
“Sometimes you go through a slump like this and its not easy, for the fans, but even more so for us as a team. We have three weeks now until the Zebre game to address what we need to work on, where we want to go as a squad. We definitely need to step it up. There’s an important block of games coming after this break. We need to play well, perform well, and get points on the board.”
Following five straight wins that saw Ulster reach the summit of the Guinness PRO12, a mounting list of injuries and a string of under-par performances have seen the team fall to four defeats in the last five games, and Pienaar admits this is far from satisfactory:
“Physically I don’t think we have fronted up the past couple of weeks. Particularly at the breakdown where we have normally been quite accurate, especially that first five weeks, for some reason we are struggling with that now. We are a team that wants to play with tempo, create momentum and get our exciting outside backs going - that’s something that we’re struggling with at times. It looks like we just lack a bit of creativity, but I know this squad is better than that and we’ll keep working hard so hopefully things will turn around quickly.”
Reflecting on Friday night’s game, the scrum-half felt the performance was not reflective of the team’s preparation in the week leading up to the game:
“We came here with one mission, and that was to get four or five points and obviously we let ourselves down. The first half was nowhere close to where we need to be. We felt like we prepared well during the week but we just struggled to get things going. I felt that we physically weren’t up there and got bullied a little bit by a hungry Edinburgh team. It’s a massive disappointment but we’ll keep our heads up, keep working hard to get back to the level that we know we’re capable of.
“Sometimes you go through a slump like this and its not easy, for the fans, but even more so for us as a team. We have three weeks now until the Zebre game to address what we need to work on, where we want to go as a squad. We definitely need to step it up. There’s an important block of games coming after this break. We need to play well, perform well, and get points on the board.”