Ulster 41 Leicester Tigers 7: Castro sums it up perfectly

On a night when rational thoughts must have been hard to come by, Martin Castrogiovanni summed up the mood of Leicester fans perfectly in his own unique way: "I fucking hate lose." The disastrous World Cup period may now be from a different calendar year, but the 41-7 loss to Ulster has brought back all those painful memories...

(Source: Daily Mail)

Richard Cockerill's Plan A was put up for judgement against Brian McLaughlin's Plan A and it was the Irishman who unequivocally came out the victor. Leicester went across the Irish Sea with a focus on exactly those areas that have served them so well in the past couple of months: the scrum, the lineout and the breakdown. Keep it tight, carry hard and stick to the basics. In the week leading up to the game Geoff Parling had shared similar thoughts on where the game would be won and lost: "Winning those early collisions against a big physical team on a Friday night at Ravenhill will be crucial to our hopes."


Though the lineout ran at 100%, in no other area of the game could Leicester claim anything close to parity with their opponents. Plan A did not work because Ulster were ferocious in everything they did. At the breakdown they sacrificed men from their defensive line and committed them to rucks - a calculated risk by McLaughlin - turning the ball over 13 times.  When they had the ball they trampled all over Parling pre-game hopes by smashing through Leicester defenders for the hard yards; Dan Tuohy, Pedrie Wannenburg and the inspirational Stephen Ferris leading the line.  And when they could carry no further Ruan Pienaar looked like the World Cup winner he is by delivering inch-perfect box kicks and up and unders, which a hard-working set of backs dutifully chased. His 8 successful kicks from 9 off the tee sliced straight through Leicester's European hopes.


In a game where possession and territory were roughly equal and the home side made 30% more tackles, lost 15% more of their scrums and 25% more of their lineouts, but scored 34 more points than their opponents, the only conclusion is that Ulster were just more effective than Leicester from 1 to 15.


When a home team with an uproarious crowd behind them hit such peaks it is impossible to say whether any alternative game plan that Leicester could have mustered would have worked. Northampton Saints surely came away from last season's Heineken Cup final with the same thought: was there anything we could have done to stop that?


We will never know because Leicester had no Plan B. They played the same as they did against Wasps last week in attempting to recycle the ball with as few numbers as possible and it failed miserably, resulting in painfully slow phases. They again tried a succession of up and unders, but there was no serious chase. With Toby Flood and Manu Tuilagi missing in midfield they resorted to tried and tested crash-ball with Matt Smith, Horacio Agulla and Alesana Tuilagi, but Ferris and co. were equal to it. To combat this, Billy Twelvetrees stood a few yards deeper to receive the ball and give himself time to think, but neither of the centres had the guile to get back over the gain line and Leicester went backwards. The attacking play was toothless and, save for Geordan Murphy's try, the Ulster try line was never even remotely at risk of being crossed. When brute force meets brute force, Leicester tend to lose.


With Ben Youngs having a miserable day at the office and eventually losing his head, it was crying out for Cockerill to intervene and remove him from the situation to risk further damage. As it was, his replacement Sam Harrison was given just 4 minutes and when the camera panned round to Youngs at full-time he looked a broken man. It is the latest in an ever-growing list of severe tests of the 22-year-old's mental strength


Looking to the bench, Richard Cockerill would not have seen the personnel that could supplement a change in game plan. That is not to question their ability, but if 'keep it tight, carry hard and stick to the basics' doesn't work then Ben Woods, Jeremy Staunton or Scott Hamilton do not offer an alternative.


This very point is the golden lesson that Northampton Saints took from their loss to Leinster in last year's final. Pitting Plan A against Plan A, Saints did not and cannot compete with the European champions for 80 minutes, but what they can do is have an alternative strategy available if their opponents are gaining superiority. Few Saints fans would challenge the presence of Brian Mujati, Stephen Myler, James Downey or Jon Clarke in their squad, indeed those 4 players have served the Saints well over the past few years. But in Paul Doran-Jones, Ryan Lamb and George Pisi, Jim Mallinder has players of a completely different style to call on: mobility to contrast power, flair to contrast steadiness and craft to contrast force.


It is a tough job to find the positives from Friday night's performance but, in spite of the Ulster bombardment, Rob Hawkins, Geoff Parling and Geordan Murphy all performed admirably. Hawkins in particular justified his selection ahead of George Chuter with some committed play in the loose and dependable throwing into the lineout.


For Leicester fans though, the positives are scarce. Couple this result with the 25-50 loss to Saracens in September and you can make the argument that the most embarrassing losses of the last decade, both domestically and in Europe, have come this season. Can they still compete at the very top? Is that big performance still in them? With just a Plan A on the Director of Rugby's laptop, probably not. But that doesn't mean it's the end of an era. Leicester have always had the right calibre of players to challenge for silverware and the current crop is no different. What they need is a Plan B and the eclectic mix of players to pull it off.