WE THREW IT ALL AWAY
Toolis says poor decision-making to blame as Edinburgh suffer collapse
The look on the face of edinburgh hooker Mike Willemse when Ian Madigan put over Ulster’s last-minute winning penalty told its own story. Distraught, he slumped to his knees as the kick went over and his side crashed out.
The 27-year-old had knocked-on 40 metres out going for an interception in the last play of the game — so blatant an offence that edinburgh head coach Richard Cockerill said he had no complaints whatsoever about the penalty being awarded.
Willemse’s error of judgment was fatal but the replacement hooker wasn’t the only one who contributed to edinburgh throwing away the chance of making the Pro14 final for the first time in their history.
Missed tackles — even from the ever-reliable hamish Watson — and poor decision-making contributed to the Scots snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Scotland lock Ben Toolis insisted Willemse, who had only been on the pitch for 12 minutes, shouldn’t be the only man to carry the can for the loss.
‘Obviously, Mike’s gutted,’ said Toolis. ‘People might say that was the deciding factor, but there were a lot of areas in the last ten minutes that led to penalties that kept them in the game, kept them in our half and we had to defend.
‘Sometimes that happens and, unfortunately for Mike, he’s probably feeling that it was his fault, but it’s not his fault: it’s a collective thing. The smallest things let them back into the game and it became a mental battle then. We probably deserved the loss, because we didn’t close out the game when we should have.
‘We need to review, and make sure that we take the positives and push on into the next Pro14 league season. Also, we have to go into europe against Bordeaux Begles in the Challenge Cup in two weeks looking for the win.’
edinburgh went into the last 20 minutes against Ulster with a 19-7 lead that they then proceeded to throw away.
‘We were stupid with some of the decisions we made, and Ulster fought hard in the second half and found a way to win,’ continued Toolis. ‘We just need to make sure that, when we’re winning and in a good position, we keep pushing and learn how to win those games.
‘Fair play to Ulster, and to Ian Madigan for those important kicks but, at the same time, we need to be a bit smarter and learn how to close those games out.
‘There have been a few games — Munster in europe last year and the year before that in the Pro14 quarters — where we played really well, but there are fine margins.
‘We need to make sure when we’re in a position like that we utilise the pitch better and don’t be silly and give them the ball.’
edinburgh led just 5-0 at halftine through a try from Stuart McInally and then, a minute after the break, extended it through a converted try from Darcy Graham. At 12-0 ahead, they were firmly in the driving seat.
The alarm bells didn’t start ringing even when Rob Lyttle got one back for Ulster as Chris Dean almost immediately went over for edinburgh to put them 19-7 ahead heading into the last quarter.
Streetwise teams would have closed the game out from then. Not edinburgh, who crumbled under pressure. Ulster hooker Rob herring pulled a try back just after the hour then, six minutes from time, John Andrew touched down for a try which was converted by Madigan to tie the scores at 19-19.
Then with the clock in the red, Willemse made his mistake — and Madigan did the rest.
Cockerill didn’t miss with his criticism of the way his team capitulated so easily near the end.
‘I am disappointed that when we were 19-7 we didn’t control the game like we can control a game,’ he said. ‘Credit to Ulster but that was all of our own making. We should have made better decisions and we should have executed better. It just wasn’t good enough from us.
‘I think we lost the penalty count 14-9, didn’t exit properly, we kicked poorly and gave them opportunities to carry back at us, and we were ill-disciplined at the tackle by not rolling away.
‘We invited them into our own half and we got what we deserved. In these games it is the little things that make the difference and some of our players clearly don’t understand what that looks like.’
Cockerill pointed the finger at his experienced players, many of whom were posted missing when it mattered.
‘We’ve got international players who play Test matches for Scotland and they need to know better,’ he said. ‘We’ve had enough opportunities to win and we had to deliver, and we didn’t. It’s not good enough.
‘They are good players and they played really good rugby to get into a winning position, but we have to stay engaged the whole time. We score, we don’t collect the kick-off and we end up getting penalised and they score from the line-out. We need to have a good, hard look at ourselves because it is a continual problem.
‘We just don’t need to be forcing a game that doesn’t need to be chased when we were ahead. Chris Dean spoons the ball down the field and they end up scoring from the next play. We have to make good decisions there. Let’s have a scrum because we were on top there. That’s just an example and there was lots of examples of our poor decision-making.
‘I’m not going to make any excuses for myself either because it is my fault, it starts with me, and the players are going to be held accountable next week but it wasn’t good enough all round.’