Ulster slump to seventh defeat in 11 games as United Rugby Championship playoff hopes dented after Benetton blow
Out-half Aidan Morgan has pleaded with the Ulster fans to back the team after Richie Murphy’s side slumped to a seventh defeat in 11 United Rugby Championship games serverely damaging their hopes of reaching the end of season playoffs.
The 34-19 defeat in Treviso against Benetton leaves Ulster 14th in the table after Muphy’s side failed to score a point after 29 minutes.
Ulster looked to be cruising to a bonus point victory after tries from Nathan Doak, Michael Lowry and Jacob Stockdale had given then a 19-10 lead.
The Italians scored 24 unanswered points as Ulster hit the self-destruct button, having David McCann, Nick Timoney and Stewart Moore all sinned binned in the second half and conceding 17 penalties in the game.
Ulster looked like salvaging something out of the game when Matty Rea crashed over for what would have been a bonus try, reducing Benetton’s lead to three points with the conversion to come.
But again it was ill-discipline that cost Murphy’s side with the try being chalked off after Tom O’Toole, in his first game back from a six-week suspension, raised an elbow into flanker Alessandro Iziko’s face.
Instead of claiming at least one match point Iziko rubbed salt in the Ulster wounds by scoring the home side’s bonus point try with the final play of the game.
Ulster will face a huge home game against the eighth-placed Scarlets in two weeks and despite a backlash on social media at losing to two Italian teams for the first time in a season, Morgan is urging the Kingspan faithful to get behind the side.
“I know it is probably tough times to stick with us but we’re working hard and I’m sure we’ll come through,” he said. “We’ll come through the other side soon so stay with us and we always value your support.
“Everyone is massively disappointed and that has been the tale of the season so far. We are looking to stay tight as a group and we’ll reflect on the result and what has happened and we’ll move forward as a group.”
Morgan felt Ulster were masters of their own downfall in Italy.
“A really tough result, we felt we scrambled quite well in the first half and were hanging in there,” said the Kiwi out-half.
“Our discipline let us down and we put ourselves under too much pressure and we fell victim to self-inflicted wounds in the end.
“We put together some good stuff in the first half, but we also allowed – through penalties and our own mistakes – them to get into our 22 and they capitalised with a couple of tries.
“The same result happened in the second half when our disciple let us down, allowing easy entries for them and we weren’t able to score enough points to keep in the match.”
Murphy rued his team’s second-half performance.
“Yellow cards comes pretty quick in that second half after a little bit of pressure, going down to 13 men makes it very, very difficult,” he said.
“The game got away from us in the second half our ill-discipline cost us badly. We are at the moment lacking a little bit of ability to get over the line when the pressure is on.”