Mitchell red swings match from Saints
BOTH head coaches agreed the pivotal moment in this contest came in the 16th minute when Saints scrum-half Alex Mitchell was binned and Ulster were awarded a penalty try.
But Dan McFarland and Chris Boyd disagreed if the correct decision was made by Italian referee Andrea Piardi and his officials.
The score pushed Ulster out to 14-3 and their third try came through the middle when they had the extra man. From there it really was only a matter of whether or not they would get the bonus point, even if Saints battled all the way to the end.
Mitchell was binned when he pushed up and should have held a pass from John Cooney to Craig Gilroy, but once it spilled from his hand he knew he was in trouble.
Boyd said: “The pivotal point was the penalty try, was it a penalty try? Then they wisely scored from a chip the next try when the half-back would have been in that space.
“It was frustrating, we let them get out to a lead and then clawed our way back. We were inaccurate and not reacting to what was going on.”
McFarland was in no doubt about the decision. “It was a definite yellow card and a penalty try, the ball would have gone to our man and he would have scored in the corner,” he said.
Ulster are now on course for the knockout stages with two wins, but Saints, while showing a vast improvement from the heavy home loss to Racing 92, are all but out after two defeats.
Ulster picked up from their superb 29-23 win away to Clermont Auvergne to hit the front inside two minutes when excellent work from centres James Hume and Stuart McCloskey created the phases which pulled the Saints defence all over the place and hooker Rob Herring exploited the mayhem to cut a superb line in to score under the posts.
John Cooney tapped over the conversion but Marcus Rea was pinged for offside and George Furbank landed the first of four penalties in the opening half.
Ulster’s third touchdown came after the penalty try when a chip from impressive full-back Michael Lowry was chased and picked by Ethan McIlroy and the winger crowned his first Champions Cup start by stepping Springbok
Courtnall Skosan and holding off the best efforts of Ollie Sleightholme to and make it 19-6.
Ulster didn’t score in the second quarter despite superior possession and it was Saints, looking for a response after their opening round 45-14 home loss to Racing 92, who hit back with two more penalties from Furbank leaving just seven between them at the interval at 19-12.
Cooney added a penalty after the restart but Ulster lost skipper Iain Henderson to a knee shortly after. But with Springbok Duane Vermeulen impressive on his home debut they secured the bonus point after 48 minutes when Saints’ Samoan fullback Ashee Tuala misjudged a crosskick from Billy Burns and Craig Gilroy pounced to score.
Northampton hit back after that and scrum-half Mitchell squeezed over after some good pressure after 61 minutes.
Mitchell then turned provider to ensure a nervous finish for Ulster when he created the opening which ended with Skosan getting through the tackles of Cooney and Stewart Moore to score and grab a losing bonus point.