Another painful trip across the Irish Sea for Edinburgh; another brutal exposure of their limitations.
Hammered in the scrums and outsmarted in the loose, Alan Solomons' side spent much of last night's RaboDirect PRO12 match chasing Ulster shadows in the chill Belfast air.
Only a late rally, which produced two tries in the final 10 minutes, added a gloss of respectability to the Edinburgh scoreline. That and a decent opening spell apart, the Scottish side took a fearful hammering all over the pitch from an Ulster team that was stronger, faster and sharper than they were.
In their previous two games Edinburgh had recorded back-to-back home victories against Treviso and Zebre but on this occasion they were given a harsh lesson on what life at the sharp end of this competition is all about.
They started the first half briskly but trailed 20-5 by the end of it. Their deficit owed something to poor defence as they failed to shut down's Ulster's strike runners, but much more to a creaking scrum and their insistence on a kick-chase game from which they only rarely managed to recycle possession.
In the early stages there was a refreshing smattering of invention in Edinburgh's game. Sam Hidalgo-Clyne, the Spanish-born scrum-half, varied the play cleverly and the team as a whole looked to have the edge against a curiously leaden Ulster. There was a kind of sloppiness about the Irish side in the early stages, and Edinburgh fed on their mistakes.
Hidalgo-Clyne was the spark behind the try that gave Edinburgh a lead after 15 minutes. They had won a scrum just outside the Ulster 22 and although they were in retreat they managed to re-secure. Hidalgo-Clyne darted off, broke past the first line of defence and shipped the ball on to Cornell Du Preez, steaming up in support. The South African No.8 had work to do, but he brushed past Mike Allen, the Ulster left wing, and ploughed over.
Given the pattern of the game up to that point, the expectation was that Ulster's nervousness would only be exacerbated by the score. As it happened, though, they actually seemed to be shaken to their senses by the five-point deficit - Harry Leonard missed his conversion attempt - and tightened up their game accordingly. Within a few minutes they had replied with a James McKinney penalty and it would not be long before they got their own noses in front.
That happened courtesy of a sublime 27th-minute try by Craig Gilroy, the full-back who had just returned to the club after a period of Ireland squad duty. It started with the Ulster forwards churning through the phases down the right, and when the ball was moved swiftly to the left, a glorious long pass by Darren Cave allowed Gilroy to spin past Greig Tonks for the try.
Six minutes later, Ulster had their second touchdown. Again, Cave was the instigator, a slashing solo break through the middle by the centre creating panic in the Edinburgh defence. His offload was no thing of beauty, but scrum-half Paul Marshall managed to get a boot to it, volleyed it over the line, and followed up to score.
That took the scoreline to 17-5, and Ulster would probably have been happy to take that margin into the break but another crushing scrum in the shadow of half-time brought them a kickable penalty, and McKinney duly slotted it between the posts.
It was to Edinburgh's huge credit that they took no more damage on the scoreboard during the third quarter, yet just at the end of that period, and with Izak van der Westhuizen only recently sent to the sin bin for dragging down a maul, they leaked another try when a series of rucks on their line ended with Marshall slipping a wonderfully well disguised pass to Robbie Diack, who crashed over for the third touchdown.
The fourth was not long in coming. Edinburgh, by now chasing the game and visibly tiring, launched an over-ambitious attack from deep in their own half but the effort expired almost immediately. A long pass by Leonard was plucked from the air by Gilroy, and the full-back scampered away for his second touchdown, delivering the try bonus point in the process.
McKinney added another soon afterwards, albeit helped by a blatant forward pass. Ulster's 41-5 advantage at that point probably flattered them a little, but as they eased off towards the finish they allowed Edinburgh to salvage a little respectability on the scoreboard as Dougie Fife and Grayson Hart crossed the try line. Edinburgh deserved praise for fighting to the finish but they still have a lot of work to do.
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