ULSTER HEAD COACH Mark Anscombe rued his team’s wasted chances in their defeat at the hands of Glasgow Warriors last night.
Ravenhill witnessed James Eddie score a late converted try to earn the Scots a 13-12 win as Ulster fell to their second consecutive loss of the new RaboDirect Pro12 campaign.
It was a case of spurned opportunities from the home side, who were ahead by four points at half-time and should really have added tries in the second half.
“It’s a bitter pill to take,” Anscombe said. “To have a game that you should have won by 20, to create three or four try-scoring opportunities and not take any of them and they get one and score a try. I think we were lazy in that last minute.
“If we had executed today there wouldn’t have been any luck in it, it would have been put to bed. But we weren’t good enough to finish off what we created.
Any time you lose last minute it’s hurting and we haven’t had many of them. It’s hard because a lot of guys worked really hard and are doing well but there are others who aren’t doing what is required of them.”
Despite the poor start to the competition, the Ulster boss tried to remain optimistic and, after claiming he was satisfied with the set-pieces on the night, went on to praise the contribution of Iain Henderson.
He also insisted that he isn’t panicking about the injury to Andrew Trimble, who is out for six weeks after having surgery on his finger.
“You’ve got to look at the positives. You’ve also got to look at the fact that you can’t week-in week-out feel sorry for ourselves for being unlucky or being close.
“You can’t afford to go 3-0 in this competition because we’re already pretty much at the bottom of the table. All your doing is giving other teams a run and then you start chasing and that’s what you’re doing all year.
“It’s still early days and there were a lot of good things that are in place. We’ve got to take that and move ahead.”
– Additional reporting by Megan Joyce
