Rúaidhrí O'Connor

But I'm sure we'll have talked about it when it comes to the Champions Cup final, but the conditions last night here at San Mami Stadium were stifling.

And while it didn't seem to affect Montpellier that much, they seemed to thrive really in them.

You could see after that opening salvo the energy levels of the Ulster team

were just affected completely by the stifling temperatures.

There was fireworks at the start and the smoke lingered, the smell lingered within the stadium.

It was so oppressively hot and that has to have had an effect.

Yeah and I think when they really have the overall reflection and Murphy made the point that no one, was it 54 points they got in the URC and no one's ever not made the playoffs with 54 points and it's an improvement on last year and

I think he was right to highlight the number of players they had in the Ireland camp.

It has been a season of some progress, but to finish it as it has, it's a real damn squib.

It's really those three games against Welsh opposition in mid-season when they kind of lost their way in the URC, as well as that Leinster game where Leinster sent up a second string and bullied them for 50 minutes.

Ulster rallied, but it was all too late.

We saw the best of Ulster in some of the tries that they scored.

The Balacoon score was an exceptional try.

He was...

kind of the one bright spark.

Isachukwu had his moment, the lovely kind of gamble through the middle of the Montpellier defence, just showed that Montpellier were gettable if you got your lines of running right, but too often there was just a lack of fizz about the way Ulster carried.

Part of that's down to the fact that they didn't have those four players that we mentioned who would have made a big difference.

Part of that is that some individuals probably froze a little bit.

I think Zach Ward had a difficult night at the office after a brilliant season.

I think some of the pack just didn't get to grips with what the task at hand, which is difficult because...