Leinster's run to another Champions Cup final has dominated Irish rugby's headlines, but the most unequivocally positive performance of the European weekend, according to Indo Sport's The Left Wing podcast, came from the province most often dismissed as Ireland's struggling fourth: Ulster.
Richie Murphy's side beat Exeter Chiefs 29-7 at Kingspan Stadium on Saturday to book a Challenge Cup final against Montpellier in Bilbao on the same weekend Leinster face Bordeaux-Begles. It will be Ulster's first major final since the 2020 URC final and their first chance to lift silverware since the 2006 Celtic League. Of the three finals they have reached since that 2006 win — the 2012 Champions Cup final, the 2013 URC final and the 2020 URC final — all three were lost to Leinster.
"They've played three finals since they last won a trophy in 2006, all against Leinster, so you'll be lucky you won't be playing them this time," host Will joked to fellow panellist Jonathan Bradley.
Bradley, fresh off paternity leave, called the win one of Ulster's best performances of the season and singled out the pack. Going into the game, Exeter were expected to "stamp their authority" up front. Instead, the Premiership side were beaten in the area where they were supposed to be strongest. Carries from Cormac Augustus and Dave McCann were highlighted, with the panel suggesting Ulster looked more like a Premiership-style forward unit than Exeter did on the day.
The combination of forward dominance and a recognisable attack — one Bradley described as "more of what we saw from Ulster early in the season, more of what got Ulster such good publicity earlier in the year" — was the most encouraging thing about the win. Ulster have been inconsistent for months, but the version of the team that turned up against Exeter is the one that recruiters and selectors have been waiting to see again.
The Left Wing's verdict on Murphy himself was a sharp contrast to the more nervous reviews he received earlier in his interim spell. Bradley described Murphy as "fairly dominionive kind of guy in size, but a good athlete," who "runs the team well" and whose ceiling as a head coach is genuinely high.
"His ceiling is high. It looks like it's working with [Jonny] Sexton because, of the provinces, Ulster's attack is probably nearly the best when they're fine," Bradley said. He acknowledged the side has had a tricky last couple of months, but argued that even in those games, Ulster have shown flashes of attack quality that the other Irish provinces sometimes lack.
The challenge now is balance. Ulster have a Challenge Cup final to prepare for, but also a URC top-eight place to fight for. Cardiff's win over Ospreys jumped them above Ulster, the Bulls have two games left to take points off rivals, and Connacht v Munster at the Aviva is another fixture that complicates the maths. Bradley's view was that Murphy will need to manage his squad carefully across the next three weekends, particularly with injuries, balancing peak preparation for Bilbao against the need to chase home knockout rugby.
The Left Wing did not shy away from comparison with the team next door. Will argued Leinster's victory over Toulon was, in many ways, "Leinster's entire season in one match" — moments of attacking class, a suffocating defence, big set-piece performances, but a final 20 minutes spent clinging on with their fingernails. Tommy O'Brien drew praise. Caelan Doris's try was credited as the moment the game tilted.
The comparison cuts both ways. Leinster head to Bilbao under unrelenting pressure to finally win another Champions Cup. Ulster, by contrast, head south with the freedom of a province playing in its first European final in five years and with a young head coach whose first major proof of concept is the chance to deliver Ulster's first trophy since 2006. The Left Wing's verdict was simple: the bigger story of the weekend, in identity terms, was actually the one being written in Belfast.
