Sensational Larmour try lights up Kingspan

SEAN O’Brien hailed the Leinster performance as the perfect way to blood young players after his side trounced Ulster in their own backyard at Kingspan.

An understrength Leinster side had far too much firepower for a disjointed Ulster outfit. Captain O’Brien said: “This will bring a lot of those young players on, to come here and get a win like that will do a lot for their development.”

A moment of magic from academy player Jordan Larmour lit up the opening half when he broke from his own half down the right, stepping inside Iain Henderson before darting past scrum-half Aaron Cairns to score after 16 minutes.

Cairns, making his first start having scored a try in his only other appearance off the bench against Edinburgh a year ago, almost got over for Ulster after 27 minutes but a combination of Irish lock Devin Toner and out-half Ross Byrne did enough to prevent him grounding the ball.

From the resultant five-metre scrum, flanker Sean Reidy peeled away and scored his first try of the campaign.

Christian Leali’ifano added the extras, having got Ulster deservedly off the mark with a penalty after seven minutes after they dominated the opening exchanges.

Rory Best, making his 200th appearance for Ulster, was guilty of a few poor lineout throws which killed promising moves, and Leinster made them pay with Byrne kicking two penalties to lead 13-10 at the break.

Ulster’s lineout woes didn’t improve when Rob Herring replaced Best as they lost his first two throws at a time when Leinster were down to 14 men after Dave Kearney was binned for a deliberate knock-on.

Ulster’s error count continued to rise and Leinster pulled further ahead when O’Brien was the architect of a counter to send Luke McGrath over in the corner just short of the hour mark to make it 18-10.

Leinster finished on a high when a penalty to the corner set up the field position which ended several phases later when McGrath sniped over for his second try.

“It’s not the way I wanted my 200th appearance to go,” said Best. “We have got to look at what went wrong and regroup.”