ULSTER SKIPPER Johann Muller has admitted that Ulster could never have lived with Joe Schmidt’s Leinster side last Saturday evening.

“I’ve had a few days to think about it and it’s still quite emotional,” Muller admitted. “You know you want to blame everything and everyone but I think looking back now, to be totally honest, even at our best I don’t think our best was going to be good enough against that Leinster side.

“I thought they were just in a different league. If you really have a look at the game and count the number of mistakes they made it’s not going to be a lot. They played the perfect game of rugby and we were below par,” said Muller.

“They deserved to win that cup and it showed that we’ve still got a lot of challenges lying ahead of us.”

Of particular disappointment to Muller was how Ulster were made to struggle at the set-pieces, an area that he and former coach Brian McLaughlin had hoped would give Ulster an edge over their opponents.

“The areas that we really banked on didn’t come off. I thought we could get on top, especially at scrum time. We were on the receiving end and their first two tries then came off scrum turnovers. It was just one of those days when the harder you tried the worse things got,” he added.