Influential captain Johann Muller was determined there would be no repeat of last year's fade-out against Northampton, writes GERRY THORNLEY

ULSTER’S SEMI-FINAL opponents may be an exception, but generally a team has to cut its teeth and experience some pain along the way before they have days like this. The hurt of last season’s quarter-final defeat in Northampton, along with pool losses in Leicester and Clermont, had been a constant reference point in the build-up to this game and was so again at half-time.

“We mentioned that the whole week,” said Ulster’s hugely influential captain Johann Muller, again the cornerstone of a calm and unflustered lineout. “We’ve learned so much over the last three years, and especially in the last two years with games against teams like Clermont and Leicester this year – being in the games and then still losing them by making stupid mistakes and the first phase not functioning like it should.

“Just the experience of those losses away really helped us a lot; 12 months ago we were in exactly the same boat, ahead and let it slip in the second-half, and we said we had to make sure we didn’t go down that road.

“It’s experience. That’s what rugby does; the more you play the more you learn, and it was great that we took it on the chin and learned from our mistakes.”

Ulster’s most pleasing win in his time at Ulster will resonate for a while.

“I think it was a special effort by everybody, not only players but management as well. We had time to prepare for this one and we knew it was going to be truly physical and tough playing a champion side like Munster and only their second loss at home in Heineken Cup rugby. Our start was something special. To be 19 points up against a great side like Munster, you’ve got to do something special to lose it and we nearly did, with the yellow card. But hats off to the guys, to come back and get the victory makes it a special day.”

Talking of the increased trust within the team, and how it was virtually unchanged from last season’s quarter-final, Muller added: “We’re not there yet. Yes it was a great win but we haven’t achieved anything yet. We’ve got a semi-final spot but that’s it. Even though it’s a great victory and it’s something really special for the team, we know that this is only the start. It’s not the end of it.”

His counterpart, Paul O’Connell, looked crestfallen. “It’s disappointing after all the hard work to get there. I don’t know if we’ve ever started a game like that with all the time I’ve been involved in Munster, to go down that much in such a short period of time. It left us with so much to do and gave them such belief.

“We had enough territory and ball to do it so to just score one try from all that was disappointing. It seemed too much to make up but we got that 10 points before half-time, we started the second half with good intensity. We just weren’t making the inroads we wanted to, we made errors and their defence was good. We probably could have done it but we weren’t accurate enough with the ball. Good teams convert points when they’re near the line. But good teams don’t concede points when they’re there and that’s what Ulster did.”

O’Connell could be forgiven for believing Romain Poite doesn’t like them, and especially him, for the Munster captain was pinged three times in the 11-6 penalty count. Ulster’s success in slowing down Munster ruck ball with such a low penalty count was a striking feature of the game.

“They certainly had guys on the ball,” said O’Connell. “It was very hard to get at their poachers with the amount of guys they had on our side of the ruck. That was a frustrating part of the game for us. Some of the penalties were legitimate but sometimes it was hard to get at them because there were so many guys on our side. We chatted to the referee and he changed after 25 minutes but I suppose we were struggling at that stage.

“We need to make better decisions, play cup rugby and have that mentality that we’ve had in the past at the knock-out stages. We’ve played clever rugby. I hold up my hand, I gave away some silly penalties in the first-half. You just can’t beat yourself and we beat ourselves too many times in that first half, conceding penalties that they were knocking over. We just need to be that little bit more clever.

“It’s a vital part of the game, not beating ourselves. We haven’t done that in the past but we’ve done that in the last couple of years. It has been tough losing certain guys but the ones who have come in have done really well. We’ll learn from these experiences. If you do nothing, don’t try to get better, you may as well throw your hat at it. It will be a tough few weeks but hopefully it will stand to us in the future as these young guys come through.”