‘No excuse’ for Ulster’s Nick Timoney as Zebre end long-term wait for win
Captain Nick Timoney admitted the home defeat to Zebre was the worst he’s suffered in his time with Ulster.
The Italians shocked the Kingspan faithful who braved the driving rain and win to record a 15-14 victory on Sunday.
It was the Parma side’s side first away win in the United Rugby Championship in 37 attempts, stretching back over a five-year period.
The defeat means Ulster are outside the play-offs spots going into the Six Nations break.
“On paper it probably is if you look at Zebre’s reputation,” said Timoney when asked to put the defeat into context. “Although I would say it probably doesn’t do them justice because they are a better team than what people give them credit for.
“We are at a level when we play at home we feel like we should be beating anyone and we certainly didn’t do that today, so I won’t go out of my way to disrespect a team that have just beaten us...but it is certainly very disappointing.”
Timoney refused to hide behind the excuse of it’s a young Ulster team in transition after a ninth loss in 14 games this season.
“As much as it is a transition we are talking internally that there is no excuse for that, there is no age on the scoresheet,” said Timoney. “We are just not taking our medicine and accepting that it is going to be a tough period...we are going out to win every week.”
“It maybe didn’t look like that or feel like that against Zebre, there are lads there now that have that little bit of experience and are performing really well and there are lads to come back.
“As much as Sunday was a bad day, I still believe that when you look at our squad as a whole we can certainly go and push well into the top eight in the league and have some really good wins.
“I’m not coming in here and saying we are just going to accept this for the next few months and take losses every week.
"We’re going out to win every game we play.
“It is unfortunate it didn’t start now but we are going to keep working hard and hope things start clicking, that is what we believe anyway.”
Timoney sent a clear message to the players in the dressing room after the game.
“I said that there are loads of things that we need to be much better at,” he said. “We are still a long way from getting our attack shape right the way it needs to be, getting our breakdown right, getting our ball retention, our set piece still has a long way to go.
“Our approach to games...there is a load of stuff that we we’re good enough at before Sunday and we showed that we are still not good enough at them but we are going to keep working hard at them and try to get better at them.
“If there is one thing I have learned from rugby, there are loads of times you feel you are as low as you can get, you can expect it or you can fight and try to make you way back up...that is what we are going to do.”