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Stormers score 17 points in first seven minutes but fall to Ulster comeback
By PA
Ulster scored six tries on their way to claiming a dramatic 38-34 comeback victory over Stormers to boost their United Rugby Championship playoff hopes after trailing 17-0.
Robert Baloucoune, Jacob Stockdale and Stewart Moore all scored cracking tries, while John Cooney kicked two conversions on his penultimate home game before joining Brive next season.
Stormers number eight Evan Roos opened the scoring with just a minute-and-a-half gone after they had turned Ulster over at a breakdown, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu converted.
The visitors out-half then dropped a goal and this was rapidly followed by Ben Loader scoring their second try when running in from his own half. Feinberg-Mngomezulu converted as Ulster were 17-0 down after seven minutes.
The home side began their fightback when Baloucoune was put over in the corner on his first game of the season after 10 minutes. Cooney failed to convert but did add the two points after Andrew Warwick touched down, just before the half-hour mark.
The half ended with Feinberg-Mngomezulu yellow carded for a block on Baloucoune and from the resulting penalty, Jack Murphy collected the ball after Cooney was tackled and got through to score to level the scores, with Cooney’s conversion attempt sailing wide.
Three minutes in, Ulster took the lead as Stockdale crossed over and Cooney converted.
The Stormers were then reduced to 13 men when skipper Neethling Fouche saw red for a head collision with Ben Carson.
Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s return saw him hit another drop goal to bring the 14-man away side back.
But then Ulster stuck again, Stockdale hitting the line and feeding Zac Ward to score and this time Murphy converted.
The Stormers once more fought back, replacement Willie Engelbrecht crossing the line after 62 minutes as Feinberg-Mngomezulu added the extras.
But it was not over yet and Ulster’s Michael Lowry broke out from deep which ended with Stewart Moore romping home to score before Nathan Doak converted the sixth try.
Once more, the Stormers replied. Home lock Harry Sheridan’s yellow card eight minutes from time led to Roos cutting Ulster’s lead with his second try of the night to bring the South Africans a their own try bonus.
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Your links are private if you were intending them to be shared.
URC us doing very well with it’s competitiveness given that each group has it’s own salary caps and entirely different makeups, from clubs, to provinces, to franchises and regions. One group might be teams from the most populace country with the biggest rugby base while another the smallest, with the least amount of rugby players to chose from.
I would also be interested in a average clock length (don’t need to go into the whole BIP hole) showing how long the last phases are taking (because one team is trying to still alter the match points outcome in some way) to complete before the game finally ends. I don’t know if its more common this year but in general I wonder if its a stat that can show how good games are/were?
You really had the same reversed 10 points lead % as you had lead changes after the 75th?
Some of these values while standing out numerically against each other have a much less correlative impact than some that tighter differences which might only stick out a small amount. While SRP’s ones might not necessarily be such examples (and here I’m still going off the basic principle that everyone knew this was happening, even though I was challenged about that assumption) they have had the advantage of the fixtures being were doctored even more than normal. In this instance its irrelevant whether they were doctored or not of course, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that there hasn’t been a lot of cross over of worst v best yet. Maybe it just feels like that because the worst are so much better this year? I definitely think that it is undeniable that all the bottom teams (that remain) have gotten better.
So I would be very interested in another weight graph of the games still, but regardless I don’t think it’s fair for SRP to claim anything over the other leagues yet. Certainly as I have said numerous times about the Top 14, it’s sub par compared to what it’s billed up to be, but that is the only league in this group that has promotion and relegation, which is the antitheses of a competitive league, so a trade off there.
Thank you very much for sharing your research though Dmitri, I hope you find another topic to get interested about!
Go to commentsI can’t believe Rugby Australia thought the NZRU would accept 1-12 split. I’m sure if the split was more even then the NZRU would’ve made it work.
It’s even worse when the NZRU relatively recently gave Rugby Australia a bigger cut of the Super Rugby broadcast.
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