Ulstermen outclassed by Kolbe and Co

ULSTER were swept aside by Toulouse to compound the misery of losing to Leinster in the PRO14 final.

Wing Cheslin Kolbe crossed twice in the first half with Antoine Dupont, Pita Akhi and Thomas Ramos chipping in after the break. Scrum-half John Cooney added a late consolation for Dan McFarland’s men.

Head coach McFarland said: “We know ourselves we didn’t look like a quarter-final team today. For whatever reason after the break we haven’t been playing very well and it looked like that today – we got punished and we deserved it.”

Ulster captain Iain Henderson added: “It feels as though we’re progressing in the right direction.

“For a lot of the season our performances were getting better – our speed to contact, our working hard for each other – today I think we stepped away

from that a bit.”

It took less than three minutes for Dupont to drive his side into the 22 before flipping a long pass out to Kolbe on the right flank, who stepped inside to cross.

Ramos missed two routine penalties allowing Cooney to kick Ulster back to within one score but Toulouse’s dominance was re-established before the interval as Kolbe again stepped inside Jacob Stockdale to score.

Joe Tekori won a turnover under his own posts as Ulster pressured in the second half and minutes later Sofiane Guitoune broke through a tackle to put Dupont in. Akhi gathered his own grubber kick to add a fourth before Ramos ran in after another break from Guitoune.

Eight minutes from time Cooney collected Michael Lowry’s cross-field kick to score a consolation try.