Ulster 54
Zebre 7
IF THIS IS to prove a reflection of how tomorrow’s Irish side will do against Italian opposition then Joe Schmidt will have been watching on in delight.
Ulster continued to enhance their growing reputation as a team with a forward pack to be reckoned with, hooker Rob Herring claiming the rarest of hat-tricks, all from mauls within the first half an hour, as the province romped to a 54-7 win over Zebre at Kingspan Stadium.
The week before, Zebre had terrorised Leinster’s front row in Parma, but there was to be no such concern for Ulster this time around. The front row established the platform early with a huge scrum win against the head and once the maul got going it was never stopped by the visitors.
Rob Lyttle also got in on the try scoring – as well as adding 17 points off the boot – while scores via a penalty try, Louis Ludik, Robert Baloucoune and Peter Nelson completed the rout that Ulster so desperately wanted.
Rob Lyttle runs in a try. Source: Matt Mackey/INPHO
With the pressure firmly on Ulster to keep pace with the rest of Conference B in the Guinness PRO14, with Benetton picking up the maximum haul against the Dragons earlier in the day and Edinburgh in action against the Cardiff Blues at the same time.
If Herring was disappointed with missing out on selection for Ireland’s Six Nations squad, then this is the kind of performance that will make Schmidt sit up and take notice again. While it may be the hat-trick of maul tries that grabs the headlines, he was part of a scrum that dominated all game.
When he piloted the first maul over, after just 16 minutes, there was an air of inevitability about it given how the lineout drive has gone for Ulster in recent weeks. When another followed its way over the line five minutes later, there was little doubt as to what way the game was heading.
It was helped, admittedly, by Zebre flanker James Brown being sent to the sin-bin for taking down the first maul of the game as it motored towards the line, but that was just as much proof of how Ulster would dominate going forward.
Yet all of a sudden the momentum shifted abruptly as Ulster saw a man of their own handed a yellow card, Louis Ludik the guilty party for quite clearly tipping a pass from Carlo Canna forward when the visitors had a large overlap on the outside, leading referee Mike Adamson to go under the sticks for the penalty try as well.
But being down a man did nothing to stop the offensive juggernaut that was the Ulster pack and they continued their maul pressure as Herring completed his hat-trick on the half-hour mark, the hooker scoring a carbon copy of his first two tries.
Another player needing to make his mark – for different reasons – was winger Lyttle, who had recovered from a shaky start to convert Herring’s latter two scores, but he put his stamp on the game a little more forcefully with the bonus point try on the stroke of half-time.