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Ulster coach Mark Anscombe is confident his team will still make the Heineken Cup quarter-finals despite Saturday's home loss to Northampton.
Ulster's 13-game unbeaten run came to an end in dramatic fashion at Ravenhill as Saints won 10-9, but the Belfast still control Pool 4, five points clear of Northampton but Castres could move within striking distance if they beat Glasgow on Sunday.
"It's sad because it's our first loss but we got beaten by a better team," said Anscombe.
"We're still a good team and we'll bounce back. It happens and you've got to acknowledge it and respect it as they did well and deserved their victory. We've got to go back and look at what we need to do better.
"Our execution was poor and we suffered from it. They got 10 points up in the first 18 minutes. We held them out well but I think we created enough opportunities to score points and we weren't patient enough and didn't have enough composure at crucial times.
"We tried to force it and they brought a little more passion than us to start with. Their physicality at the start got them going. We weren't complacent but we were a little more passive early on and we created enough opportunities but we just weren't composed enough at crucial times and we didn't take our points when we had opportunities.
"Our destiny is still in our own hands.
"We're not relying on other teams to see how it goes, if we win our last two games we'll qualify. Not every team has that opportunity, we have and we need to take it."
Meanwhile, Northampton Director of Rugby Jim Mallinder hailed his pack for the way the responded to the heavy loss to Ulster at home a week ago.
"We had the determination to put the last game right," said Mallinder.
"We were bitterly disappointed with the first game and we got a lot of criticism from various places and I think as a team we were determined to put that right.
"The front five were outstanding. The set-piece went really well as did the breakdown. Last week we couldn't get any quick ball and we didn't get on the front foot at all. In this game from the start we were on the front foot with our forwards working really hard and we got some good width in our game.
"We could have possibly scored another couple of tries. If we look back over the full 80 minutes I thought we deserved it."
Comments
bullitt says...
Were they "unforced" errors, or were Saints making Ulster force moves which simply weren't on?
Ulster are clearly still in the driving seat for this group and a safe enough bet to qualify to the 1/4s. The desperate measure to say "Saints won because Ulster gifted ut to them" is the usual pathetic excuses that run ragged through the sport and sore losers that are becoming more and more apparent on the terraces.
Last week Saints were well and truly mugged by a strong Ulster side at their own patch, given a rugby lesson in the process. This week the reverse happened.
Posted 12:29 17th December 2012
Houston_11 says...
Fair play to Saints - better team on the night. Ulster cannot make that amount of unforced errors, the majority simple handling/contact errors and expect to win. Had we cut them out we would have won that game, but at least as Anscombe says, destiny is still in our hands.
Regarding the semi-final, if Ulster win their next two games, I'd worry for any team coming to Ravenhill. The run had to come to an end at some point - at least in this instance, we have no complaints on the result.
Only Ulster to qualify from this group - most likely 3-5 rank.
Posted 16:11 16th December 2012
ArmchairGeneral says...
Not sure any team in this pool will make semi-finals
Posted 15:44 16th December 2012
NHsaints says...
We won our pride back, now we need to win our next two games with bonus points if we want to qualify. I have to give it to Ulster though, they'll probably qualify top of our pool and either they or Clermont will probably win the Heineken cup.
Posted 09:46 16th December 2012