"The Final"

Another Leinster victory on their way to a perfect season. Ulster actually played well but it's a testament to how good Leinster are that Leinster barely got out of second gear and still won by a country mile.

Ulster's performance saw them shut Leinster down for long periods. They put Leinster under huge pressure at lineout time. They had multiple pods competing on the Leinster throw and even with their safety blanket of Devin Toner Leinster couldnt find a bankable ball. Kelleher will ship a lot of the blame and probably rightly so due to the overthrows but this was also a system failure. Jumpers failing to get into the air generally isn't the hookers fault.

Ulster's lineout pressure also helped to nullify one of Leinsters other main weapons - the maul. Leinster were forced to throw to the front to have any chance of winning their own ball. Ulster knew this and loaded their maul defense to counter very successfully.

Ulster's gameplan was simple enough, use Henderson, McCloskey and Coetzee to get over the gainline and put in contestable box kicks. Both worked really well. They won their collisions and the Leinster back three yet again struggled under the high ball. However Ulster couldn't capitalize. Leinster won the reset race by a mile. Ulster got front foot ball but couldn't realign their attacking structure quick enough and the Leinster defense sat waiting for them. It was just too easy for the blue jerseys to line up the ball carriers especially once in the Leinster half.

Ulster knew they needed scores but the decisions to go for touch and not for posts on several occasions was strange to say the least.

The Ulster and Munster template of pinning Leinster deep in their own half, exploiting the aerial battle and potential weakness in the back three and forcing Leinster to overcommit players to the breakdown to deal with the jackal threat is something Saracens will be very keen to copy.

Leinster have plenty of work ons but also know they didn't have to push themselves this evening. Even their team selection said there was bigger games to come than this "Final".