Glasgow officials will find out today if further action is to be taken over the incident that led to centre Mark Bennett losing consciousness midway through the second half of this match and being taken off on a stretcher after lengthy treatment on the pitch.
The game was stopped for around seven minutes while doctors attended to the 21-year-old. Afterwards, Warriors figures were guarded in their public reaction, but privately they were incensed by what they believed was a 'choke' tackle around the player's neck that led to his unconsciousness.
Footage of the game is now in the hands of Murray White, the match citing commissioner. White must decide later today whether further action should be taken over the sequence of events that led to Bennett being taken off. There was also disquiet in the Glasgow camp over a couple of incidents involving Nick Williams, the Ulster No.8, one of which appeared to be a tip tackle on Warriors winger Sean Lamont, who was taken off with concussion a few minutes later.
Irish sides have made a speciality of holding players up in the tackle - a ploy that has come to be known, misleadingly, as the choke tackle. The aim is to create a maul and thereby win a turnover. In most cases, it is perfectly legal, so long as the tackled player is held beneath his shoulders. However, holding a player around the neck is prohibited on the grounds of its obvious danger.
Gregor Townsend, the Warriors head coach, made it clear the he felt Bennett had been tackled illegally.
"He was choke-tackled and he lost consciousness for a bit," said Townsend. "He has fully recovered now. The game lost momentum a bit because I thought we were playing well until then. It's not good to lose a player but we're really glad he has recovered. If it's a [neck] choke then that is obviously something that is not legal. The tackle has to be under the shoulders.
"If you are trying to hold players up from under the shoulders then that is legal; if you're above the shoulders it is not. There are people who look at these incidents to find out what can be seen on video. We have to make sure that the laws are applied and tackles are below the shoulders."
At the time of the Bennett incident, Glasgow trailed 15-9. As Lamont and Peter Horne had already been taken off by that point, their midfield had a makeshift look, with winger DTH Van der Merwe brought into the centre of the field. Within 10 minutes, Ulster had added another 14 points to their tally, with two tries that both exploited errors in the Glasgow defence.
It would be wildly wrong, however, to pin Glasgow's defeat, and the loss of their unbeaten Guinness PRO12 unbeaten record, on that sequence of events. Of far more significance was the way they were out-muscled by the Ulster pack in the first half.
Even without the disruption in the Glasgow backline, it was a pattern of play from which Ulster would usually expect to reap rewards later in the game. It also revealed an alarming vulnerability in Glasgow ahead of their European Rugby Champions Cup opener against Bath at Scotstoun on Saturday. As Townsend observed, there are many similarities between Bath and Ulster. Were the Warriors to repeat this performance against the west country side then they would have no right to expect an outcome any different.
However, Townsend rejected a suggestion that this had been too brutal as a rehearsal for the Bath game, saying that his players were perfectly capable of coming back stronger from such a tough physical battle. "No, it is the perfect preparation," he smiled. "Because of the intensity, your levels of expectation go up for the next week. I'm pretty confident that our players will turn up at training and put their hands up to be selected."
Until Bennett's departure, Glasgow had kept Ulster in sight on the scoreboard, where all the points had come from the penalty contest between Finn Russell and Ian Humphreys. Yet there was unquestionably a feeling around the tidy new Kingspan Stadium that the Warriors were flattered by the margin and simply hanging on. They lost their grip after Bennett went off, with Craig Gilroy and Tommy Bowe running in the tries for Ulster.
Sean Maitland, who had been moved to full-back after Peter Murchie pulled out late due to illness, made a satisfying return in his first competitive match of the season, albeit a disappointing one. Afterwards, he said he had felt the pace - "the lungs were hissing a bit" - but acknowledged that Glasgow had not been able to play with their customary verve and fluidity.
"It wasn't the Glasgow way," said Maitland. "We kept losing the ball. We didn't really attack in the 22 because we kept losing the ball. Usually, our offloads stick, but that was a different story. We lost the ball far too much."
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