{"id":110384,"date":"2025-05-18T00:45:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T00:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/110384\/"},"modified":"2025-05-18T00:45:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T00:45:10","slug":"ulster-see-out-season-with-heavy-defeat-to-edinburgh-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/110384\/","title":{"rendered":"Ulster see out season with heavy defeat to Edinburgh \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ulster\u2019s annus horribilis came to a conclusion on Friday night when the province fell to a crushing 47-17 at the hands of Edinburgh. <\/p>\n

The Scottish side ran in seven tries over the 80 minutes to secure their place in the URC quarter-finals. <\/p>\n

As the home side lapped up the applause of a sold-out Hive Stadium, the Ulster players gathered in a corner of pitch for their post-match huddle where the mood was much more sombre. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sight that Ulster supporters have become too familiar with over the last few months and Friday night\u2019s contest unfortunately followed a similar path of recent games. <\/p>\n

\"Derry<\/a>\"Ulster<\/a><\/p>\n

The trend of starting positively continued against Edinburgh before the challenge petered out completely in the second period. <\/p>\n

Ulster did manage to avoid extending one stat though when for the first time in three URC games they scored in the second half of a match. <\/p>\n

Jude Postlethwaite\u2019s stunning individual effort in the 71st minute turned out to be nothing more than a consolation score as by this stage, the game was long over as a contest. <\/p>\n

Centre Postlethwaite has been one of Ulster\u2019s few success stories this campaign and his breakaway score from his own 22 again illustrated the potential that exists in the squad that head coach Richie Murphy and others talk about.<\/p>\n

But in the wake of this latest defeat, Murphy also highlighted the need for Ulster to look after the ball a lot better. <\/p>\n

\u201cI thought there was loads of effort and endeavour from the lads, but 20 plus turnovers put us in a very difficult position,\u201d bemoaned Murphy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought at times we defended our line really well, other times we just weren\u2019t good enough in and around that contact area. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s plenty to digest, but we come back here I suppose to the Hive Stadium in the second game of the season next year and we have a lot of improvements to do between now and then.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, as Murphy said, Ulster started on the front foot but unforced errors proved to be their downfall and Edinburgh took full advantage. <\/p>\n

In the space of 7 minutes, Darcy Graham and Magnus Bradbury helped the hosts to a 12-0 lead. But a penalty try following a Graham deliberate knock-on, and a Werner Kok score brought Ulster level by the half hour mark. <\/p>\n

But Edinburgh replied through Ewan Ashman to go into the break leading 19-12.<\/p>\n

Edinburgh bossed the second half and Magnus Bradbury and Pierre Schoeman added further tries before Postlethwaite touched down for Ulster\u2019s solitary second half score.<\/p>\n

Graham went on to complete a hat-trick for an Edinburgh side who can now look forward to play-off rugby, while Ulster face a period of self-reflection.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we need to look really hard at ourselves and find the gaps, the gaps that are within our game at the moment,\u201d continued Murphy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to front up to them and we need to build a plan around how we close that gap between us and some of the teams at the top end of the league. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels now, at this moment in time, like we\u2019re a long way off the top eight, but in reality, a couple of games early on in the season, if we could have turned them around, it would have given us a great chance to finish off the season in a better position than we are. <\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, we have to own our performances. And you know, 20-plus turnovers this week, 18-plus last week. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very hard to win games when you\u2019re giving the opposition the ball that many times.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ulster\u2019s annus horribilis came to a conclusion on Friday night when the province fell to a crushing 47-17…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4884,712,16,34596,15,4510],"class_list":{"0":"post-110384","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-ulster-rugby","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-united-rugby-championship"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}