Given that qualification from the Champions Cup pool stages may come down to infinitesimal margins, you’d have expected Ulster to be more careful. After 58 minutes last Saturday, they led Clermont 39-18 on the scoreboard and 5-0 on match points; by the end, they were happy with a win of any hue. The visitors were relatively content, too, having nicked two bonuses — one for scoring four tries, another for narrowing the deficit to seven.
The impact of that final quarter on the shape of Pool Five was huge, extending Clermont’s lead to three points heading into this afternoon’s rematch. Remarkably, it wasn’t until they got to the dressing room that some of the Ulster players realised the maths of the situation. Perhaps even more remarkably, their student of Pure Mathematics — and man-of-the-match — only twigged later that evening.
It was in conversation with journalists at Kingspan stadium last Wednesday that Iain Henderson owned up. When did he know the numbers? “A few hours after (the game) for me, maybe!” he said with a grin. “A little later on than most people. Look, we were delighted to get the win first and foremost. It was frustrating afterwards. I suppose any team can say that conceding any try is a soft try but we let in a couple that in hindsight we could have kept out. But that’s the way it goes…”
That’s the way it goes with Ulster, anyway. Already this year, lack of street smarts saw them chucking away a potential losing bonus in Bordeaux. Last season, they had three tries bagged by the 67th minute in Oyonnax but failed to finish the job and ultimately, that sloppiness cost them a place in the quarter-finals.
As Henderson points out, managing the bigger picture is a job for leaders and game managers, guys with two, nine and 10 on their backs. He has more immediate, physical jobs to get done. Last week, he carried frequently more than any Ulster player, whether running an intelligent, try-scoring, support line off Tommy Bowe or hit-and-spinning his way out of trouble.
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He also executed several one-man choke tackles — though the best recent example of his freakish strength was against Cardiff a couple of weeks ago, when he single-handedly extracted Blaine Scully from a ruck and dumped him on the floor. Not the wisest move from a safety point of view, but still slapstick gold.
Henderson was still in the Ulster Academy when Ulster last played at the Stade Michelin, in January 2012. He now takes responsibility not just for his own performance but for Ulster’s. If you need any confirmation of this, see the photograph of his celebrations on the final whistle last weekend. Moreover, he’s willing to defend his team-mates on the bench, whose performance was seen by many as the reason for Ulster’s sagging in the final quarter against Clermont.
“That’s unfair to say,” Henderson says. “We know ourselves we took our foot off the throat and didn’t close out the game the way we would have liked to. We rested on our laurels a bit in the second half when we scored the couple of tries. Looking at it from the outside you would say we thought — naively and stupidly — that we’d won the game there and then and let Clermont get back into it.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say the players coming off the bench aren’t good quality players. They (Clermont) might have better known depth, or bigger names, but I don’t think the quality of our depth is a problem.”
Now approaching his 25th birthday, there are few remaining traces of adolescent goofiness. He’s getting married next July. He even managed to pull off a romantic marriage proposal in Miami last summer, despite an airline disrupting his plans, and despite his failure to research Florida’s climate for July.
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“I had bags lost for a good number of days,” he says. “It doesn’t bear thinking about that the engagement ring might have been in a bag. It wasn’t. Not even I was that stupid!
“It all fell into plan nicely. The only thing I didn’t anticipate was it being so warm. It was atrociously hot. I couldn’t get a breath of air the whole time we were there. I’d put on a clean T-shirt and go out and it would instantly drench with sweat and you had to go and change. This didn’t bode well. It was on Miami Beach where we got engaged and it was literally out on the beach and back inside again. Suzanne was like: ‘We’ll get a wee photo together.’ I’m sitting in the photo, pale as a sheet, dripping with sweat, T-shirt wringing! Not a good look.”
Suzanne is in charge of wedding preparations but he did insist on a date, July 14, a week after the conclusion of the Lions tour. He already looks a certainty to tour, so long as he can stay fit. Injuries have restricted him to being involved in just five of Ireland’s 12 Tests in 2016 and he was forced to watch events in Soldier Field from the discomfort of his sofa. “It frustrated me for a good while but I took it on the chin and I’d be grand about it,” he says, stoically.
His chances of playing the All Blacks next summer are improved by his versatility — both he and Maro Itoje are in the running for jersey numbers four, six, 19 and 20. It’s fairly obvious that Henderson prefers the extra ball-carrying at six but he surely understands that with more loosies than locks in Ireland, Joe Schmidt is more likely to deploy him in the engine room. Besides, if a lock can run a line like the one he took to score against Australia, all should be fine.
In the longer term, he’s capable of emulating Paul O’Connell and Devin Toner as one of those locks who can own the running of the Ireland lineout. He made the calls in the second half last week when Franco van der Merwe and Robbie Diack were off the pitch, and did so at under-20s levels also. Being so numerate helps, though sometimes you can be too clever, it seems.
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“I know Devin gets frustrated with me at times,” he says. “Some of his calls mightn’t make exact logical sense. I’d wait and call him aside and say: ‘Dev, that doesn’t make that much sense.’ He’d tell me to shut up and go away.”
What about the Pool 5 maths this afternoon? Henderson reckons that Ulster can lose but still go through in January if they manage to get bonus points victories away to Exeter and at home to Bordeaux. Bordeaux’s victory at Sandy Park last Sunday means it’s a pool with three clubs still in the mix.
“I have looked at it but haven’t tried to figure out the maths of it,” he said on Wednesday, rather curiously. You’d hope that by now, everyone in the party knows the numbers. It can make a big difference.
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Clermont Auvergne v Ulster
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