After shipping over 60 points to Toulouse on Sunday, Ulster have no time to be feeling sorry for themselves
Instead, the province must regroup and take whatever learnings they can before they square up to Bordeaux-Bégles on Saturday afternoon.
That’s the viewpoint of fullback Stewart Moore.
With no time to dwell on an opening-day defeat, Moore has urged his teammates to learn what they can from the loss and transfer the negatives into positives so they can kick-start their European challenge against the team that currently sits second in the French Top 14.
“Obviously, you take your learnings. We’ll go into next week, we’ll lick our wounds; we’re not going to feel sorry for ourselves,” said Moore.
“We’ll learn from it and go straight into Bordeaux. There’s no point crying over it and everyone is going to take a learning from it, whether you are young or old from that game tonight.”
Ulster lock Alan O’Connor echoed Moore’s sentiments but he was also quick to point to the excellent Champions Cup debuts of young front rowers James McCormick and Scott Wilson.
Up against seasoned campaigners like Peato Mauvaka and Dorian Aldegheri, O’Connor praised the efforts of his fledging teammates.
Toulouse also had the audacity to spring Julien Marchand from the bench in what was a tough school day for some of Ulster’s inexperienced starters.
“I think there are plenty of learnings from all aspects of the game.
“There’s a lot of young guys played today, particularly in the forwards. I thought James McCormick and Scott Wilson did really well in some of them scrums,” O’Connor says.
“We were up against it in terms of weight but we stuck together as a unit of eight in terms of our scrums and our maul defence a lot of the time.
“A lot of young guys will take that experience and put that in the bank and then they’ll grow from it.
“Like me as a senior guy, I’ll take my learnings from every game as well. So, I’ll look to grow from it as well and come back and play better next week as well.”
One aspect of Ulster’s performance that came under added scrutiny was their defence.
If you give any backline time and space you’re asking for trouble, and if that backline is being orchestrated by the world’s best player in Antoine Dupont, there’s only going to be one result.
Dupont’s day finished as early as the 59th minute, but yet again, his impact was in that time was devastating.
The scrum-half made 4 off-loads, kicked 2 50:22’s and made the most carries of any player of the weekend, finishing with 23 to his name.
“Like with that score early on, we gave Dupont too much room in midfield. He ran across the field and we weren’t going up together as a collected defence like we normally would.
“So, if you give Dupont any space, he’s got time to make a decision and normally it’s the right one and he did really well.”
