Ulster may have recorded a win in Italy against Treviso, but having been 24-0 up there was frustration that the province didn’t go on and record a bonus point and that by the end, Treviso were back in the game. It was a second half performance that disappointed the Ulster captain Rory Best, especially as his side had played so well in the opening 35 minutes of the match:
“We were really, really good in that first half,” Best says. “We played with tempo, we were strong at the breakdown and we took our chances well. We started the second half well but we just got a little bit loose. We went off on our own agendas at times to try and score that try instead of doing what we had done well in the first half, which was a good team effort, taking them through the phases and then waiting for the mis-matches to happen. We were probably just not patient enough. That was frustrating. You have to give credit that when they got momentum we held on for the win. Having said that we were disappointed with how the second half went for us.”
Having scored three tries so early on it could be argued that Ulster’s reversal in fortunes was down to the pressure to get the fourth try and the try bonus point. Not so says the Ulster skipper:
“We didn’t feel under pressure. We felt if we stuck to our game it would happen. It just didn’t. We probably tried to force it a bit. At 22-7 we were just short a few times. We just didn’t have the discipline to get over the line. We tried to do a little bit too much on our own. When they came back at us, they took one visit into our 22 after 15 minutes of our pressure and we let them in too easy. We were soft around the fringes and we let them pick and go and smash us a little bit there.”
Ulster went to Treviso aiming to get the win and they achieved that target. Summing up such a Jekyll and Hyde performance isn’t easy but Best is keen to stress the positives from the game and to take them into the rest of the Guinness PRO12 campaign.
He says: “The first half performance was good and we will take heart from that. Ultimately we got the four points and that’s what we went there for. If we keep picking up four points between now and the end of the season we will be in a good place.”