Cheika in tight spot at prop

Adding to their woes about losing Felipe Contepomi for the pivotal month of their season, Leinster have also been hit with a propping crisis that will oblige them to seek an additional wild card to their frontrow options for the Heineken European Cup. To this end, they have been looking at the possibility of signing the Northland NPC prop Stan Wright.

Concern over Will Green's neck injury was compounded on Saturday night when their Samoan tighthead Fosi Pala'amo suffered at best a sprained ankle - the direct result of the scrum difficulties Leinster were having at Ravenhill. When the Leinster scrum buckled, scrumhalf Chris Whitaker was forced to pick up and drive, whereupon he was tackled and landed on the Samoan's ankle.

That apart, coach Michael Cheika was palpably the more pleased with Saturday night's share of the four Magners Celtic League points.

"I don't think I've ever been involved in a game with so much pick and drive," he said. "It's funny, when the (international) boys were away the previous week and it was just a mudheap in Anglesea Road, that was all we did, not with any idea that this would be the case.

"But I was really proud of them. They showed a lot of courage and heart. A lot of teams would have thrown in the towel against that breeze at three-nil up, but we knew at half-time how difficult conditions were, so we were confident that we could keep ourselves in the game.

"And we've now kept ourselves in touch with Ulster, which is the important thing because we get them now in Lansdowne Road at the end of the year" - a reference to the final, final farewell to Lansdowne Road on New Year's Eve in what is rapidly approaching a sell-out.

Cheika took heart from this effort in terms of readying Leinster for their European Cup meetings with Agen over the next fortnight.

"That type of ticker (courage) is something we can really use. It only galvanises a team when they play a game like that . . . that was a real step forward for us in the engine room."

By contrast, although his counterpart Mark McCall hailed a controlled first-half performance, he admitted: "Our second half was a disappointment to us. I thought our discipline was poor . . . Having said all that, I thought they (Leinster) played really well in the second half. The way they kept the ball was exceptional. I suppose you could say we were perhaps a bit fortunate to get a draw."

His assistant Allen Clarke echoed McCall's view that Ulster won't have learnt an awful lot from the night, but he found consolation in that ahead of next week's Eurpopean Cup clash away to London Irish: "If London Irish are looking at that game, the one thing we'll take out of it is that they haven't learnt much."

And McCall is sure this will be an altogether different type of game.

"I expect London Irish to throw the ball around and play with width. Because of where they are in the table they have nothing to lose by going for a bonus point so I expect them to give the ball a bit of air. Our forwards may not do much on Monday but our backs certainly will."

Clarke also hailed the "fantastic" atmosphere generated by the 12,500 crowd. Among those was a noisy band of Leinster supporters, the self-styled Ultras. For one coachload, their journey home was delayed until late into a stormy might when the windscreen wipers blew away.