Burns-Inspired Ulster Earn Rare Dublin Win Over Leaders Leinster

Ulster started 2024 with a bang by beating BKT United Rugby Championship leaders Leinster 22-21 for their only their third win in 22 visits to the RDS Arena.

Billy Burns’ right boot was at its creative best, setting up tries for Nick Timoney (2) and Jacob Stockdale as Ulster deservedly led 19-14 at half-time.

Leinster, who had two late withdrawals in captain James Ryan and Jimmy O’Brien, crossed through Cian Healy and Rob Russell to erase an initial 12-point deficit.

A John Cooney penalty gave Ulster a 22-14 advantage, and despite Dan Sheehan replying from a maul, a territorially-dominant Leinster could not avoid their first defeat since the opening weekend of the season.

Leinster lock Joe McCarthy, a late replacement for Ryan, added to his growing reputation with another abrasive performance.

But it was not enough to deny fast-starting Ulster. Timoney took his tries very well, but Burns, the winners’ creator-in-chief, stood out as the BKT URC player-of-the-match.

Burns’ brilliantly accurate kicks – and smart wet-weather play – teed up all three of Ulster’s tries, and he almost delivered a fourth for replacement Michael Lowry from another cross-field kick.

Giving his reaction afterwards, Ulster head coach Dan McFarland said: “It’s the best challenge in the URC (playing Leinster at the RDS) and to come away with a victory and the manner of it is very pleasing.

“That was probably quite exciting, gutsy. To me that was a really gutsy performance from us interspersed with three brilliant tries.

“We took our points when we needed to take them. The rest of it was clench your teeth, get down in the trenches and do the work that you have to do.”

He added: “If you play the kind of defence that Leinster are going to play this year, they are susceptible to kicking. There was some high quality and accurate kicking, Billy is one of the best in the game at that. I genuinely mean that.

“Definitely it was a plan but you have to have variety in that, be able to do it different ways and not be obvious. Setting it up and planning it is difficult but those guys understand that. They have to execute it well.

“There was certainly one of them (the tries) where Billy was smart, understood where our players were going to be and put the ball there, even when it is not structured.”

Ulster’s varied kicking game certainly exposed Leinster’s defence early on, setting the template for this New Year’s Day derby success.

Taking a leaf out of Sale Sharks’ book, Burns deftly chipped in behind the rush defence. Timoney gathered the ball, beat Russell’s attempted tackle and made it over the whitewash despite Ciaran Frawley’s challenge.

Following Cooney’s conversion, McFarland’s men quickly turned defence into attack after Will Addison had won a high ball.

Timoney and Stuart McCloskey spearheaded a pacy break, and with Leinster short of numbers out wide, Burns prodded a kick out to the left for Stockdale to gather and gallop home untouched.

Trailing 12-0 early on, the Leinster forwards seized control and Healy crashed over for his 31st try in 270 provincial appearances, which Sam Prendergast converted.

The table toppers edged ahead when Prendergast and the returning Tommy O’Brien put Russell over in the left corner, with 23 minutes on the clock.

Prendergast had reacted quickest to a kick from Jamison Gibson-Park that bounced back off the crossbar during the build-up, and the 20-year-old out-half also converted with aplomb.

However, five minutes before the interval, Luke Marshall and Tom O’Toole both carried well before Burns’ cross-field kick went over Prendergast’s head and bounced up for Timoney to double his tally.

Cooney curled over a classy conversion and he opened the second half’s scoring with a 55th-minute penalty. Ulster flanker Sean Reffell was having more impact at the breakdown.

Nonetheless, with Ulster’s lineout letting them down, Leinster closed the gap to just 22-21 with a timely try in the right corner from Sheehan.

McCarthy’s charge-down on Cooney had lifted the hosts beforehand, and the newly-introduced Harry Byrne nailed the difficult conversion.

Victorious at the Ballsbridge venue in 2013 and 2021, the Ulstermen knuckled down in defence with centre Marshall crucially intercepting a Gibson-Park pass close to his own posts.

Replacement Nathan Doak’s inch-perfect kick also forced Frawley to concede a lineout near the Leinster line.

Last beaten at the RDS by the Vodacom Bulls in June 2022, Leinster won a last-gasp scrum penalty, yet Addison made sure Byrne’s long-range kick failed to find touch, leaving Ulster to celebrate a famous win.

Speaking in the aftermath, Leinster head coach Leo Cullen admitted: “Unfortunately we weren’t quite good enough today. I thought we would be good enough, I thought we had chances to win the game, but unfortunately we just weren’t quite good enough.

“A little bit of a slow start. Ulster, you could see that kick-play coming. They executed well and finished well, then there’s a breakout try, we miss a tackle and they get away and execute again.

“I thought then we were well on top, going well in the contact area, getting in for a couple of tries ourselves and suddenly then it’s 14-12. Again, Ulster do well, a nice cross-field kick, the ball sits up and it’s a well-taken score.

“The way the conditions were, it was always going to be helpful if you were in the lead because it was going to be harder, particularly as the game went on, because the pitch was churning up and it just became a bit harder to play.

“Having said that, we still have chances, get in for a maul try and we need to be better there in managing that period of play, 10 minutes to go and we’re down on their try-line and get a little bit impatient.

“It was going to be hard to get down there again so it was just that patience piece. So, hugely frustrating but give a lot of credit to Ulster. They were more clinical in terms of the chances. We had more chances than they did but we couldn’t execute unfortunately.”