Frustration for Dan McFarland as Ulster let lead slip again

Gloucester’s replacement outhalf George Barton scored with the last play of Saturday’s clash at Kingsholm five minutes into injury time to give the English Premiership side a 38-34 win.

Ulster did pick up two match points to go with their losing bonus point at home to Toulouse but even if they win their two remaining pool games with maximum points it would be highly unlikely 13 points will be enough to finish in the top four of Pool B and book a quarter final spot.

Ulster conceded five tries at Kingsholm, two of which were penalty tries and received three yellows.

Ulster led by 10 points with six minutes remaining when Ethan McIlroy on the pitch for a minute as a replacement for Michael Lowry to make his European debut was sin binned for a deliberate knock on, which gifted Gloucester a penalty try.

Ulster coach Dan McFarland disagreed with the match officiating team’s decision.

“We were a little unlucky on the yellow card, I personally felt like Ethan was trying to catch the ball and I thought Rob Herring was coming across but that didn’t make the difference,” he said aterwards.

“We had a poor first-half, we gave up an early try with some poor tackling and we didn’t defend their maul very well in the first-half.

“When we were down to 13 men, I thought we were fantastic and started to really play some top level stuff.

“We went into the second-half and fought really hard, sorted out the maul defence, played some really good stuff and got to ten points up.

“Then we decided that was the time to start giving penalties away and make errors to piggyback them up the pitch.

“That was the end of it. Gloucester were always going to be a dangerous side, they score a lot of tries and the thing for us was not to give them opportunities in there, the time we did it most was when we were ten-points up.”

McFarland refused to concede Ulster are out of the elite competition.

“No idea, haven’t thought about it, we’re just focussed on trying to win the next two games, it’s as simple as that and we’ll see where that takes us,” added the coach.

Gloucester struck after six minutes with Welsh winger Louis Ress-Zammit finishing a flowing move off in the corner with Lloyd Evans converting.

Ulster responded immediately with captain Billy Burns returning to his old club darting over with John Cooney converting.

Evans landed a penalty to put the home side in front.

With Rob Herring already in the bin, the home forwards forced a penalty try on 26 minutes with Alan O’Connor also being yellow carded.

Despite being two men down Ulster were able to get points on the board with Cooney’s long range penalty to cut the English side’s lead to 17 10 at the interval.

Centre Mark Atkinson got Gloucester’s third try two minutes after the restart.

Cooney and Nick Timoney linked to put Michael Lowry clear for a converted try on 53 minutes.

The game was level just before the hour mark after Ulster were awarded a penalty try with Rees-Zammit yellow carded for denying Ulster a scoring opportunity. Cooney’s 66th minute penalty put Ulster in the lead and the scrum half looked to have won it when he sprinted from his own half to wrap up the bonus point with a fourth try for the visitors.

Gloucester got back in the game with the penalty try from McIlroy’s indiscretion before Barton won it deep in injury time.

Gloucester: K Moyle, C Sharples, C Harris, M Atkinson, L Rees-Zammit, L Evans, C Chapman, V Rapava-Ruskin, J Singleton, C Knight; E Slater, M Alemanno, J Reid, L Ludlow, R Ackermann.

Replacements: H Walker for Singleton 69 mins, A Seville for Rapava-Ruskin 66 mins, J Ford-Robinson for Knight 62 mins, A Craig for Alemanno 62 mins, S Nagle-Taylor for Ackermann 60 mins, T Venner for Chapman 64 mins, G Barton for Harris 77 mins, H Trinder for Sharples 68 mins

Ulster: M Lowry, M Faddes, J Hume, S McCloskey, J Stockdale; B Burns, J Cooney, E O’Sullivan, R Herring, M Moore, A O’Connor, D O’Connor; S Reidy, J Murphy, N Timoney,

Replacements: J Andrew, K McCall, T O’Toole for Moore 43 mins, M Rea for Reidy 43 mins, G Jones, A Mathewson, I Madigan for Burns 75 mins, E McIlroy for Lowry 73 mins

Ref A Ruiz (France).