ULSTER HEAD COACH Dan McFarland was unwilling to take any solace from running defending European champions Toulouse right to the wire as they exited the Heineken Champions Cup at the last-16 stage on Saturday night.

Antoine Dupont played the role of heart-breaker at Kingspan Stadium, the lethal scrum-half going over five minutes from the full-time whistle to settle a 30-23 scoreline in favour of the French side, which earned them a 50-49 win on aggregate and sets up a quarter-final tie against Munster next month.

But for Ulster it was an agonising way to go out of the competition, the 14 men holding on for dear life after Tom O’Toole’s red card for a shoulder to the head of Anthony Jelonch only to be undone right at the death by the World Player of the Year, sucking the life out of a sold-out stadium.

Despite the scoreline going against them, to come as close to beating Toulouse as they did shows continued progression from Ulster and, on another day, it could have been them preparing for an all-Irish last-eight tie back in Belfast against their inter-provincial rivals.

But McFarland wasn’t willing to deal in hypotheticals and he was left ruing the chances they had to win the game, particularly giving away a late try to Romain Ntamack at the end of the first-leg and then handing another to him in the first-half on Saturday night, the French fly-half intercepting John Cooney’s pass and going the length of the pitch.

“It puts us out of the competition,” he grimaced when asked what he took from the two-legged tie. “The game was there for us to win, we won over there last week. We should have won by 13 points last week.

“Here we’re in the game competing with them and the game was decided because we did a few critical things that were wrong. Teams do that obviously but if you want to win at this level against sides with the quality of Toulouse, you can’t afford to make those mistakes.

“It happens but, on the day, today we didn’t quite get it right.”

Of course, the focus will be on O’Toole’s red card – about which there can be no complaints – but Ulster could have had the game won long before that had they held out in the latter stages of the game in Toulouse a week ago or managed to stay defensively sound in the first-half of the second-leg.

But to downplay the role of the red card altogether would be wrong. Down a man against one of the most dangerous offenses in European rugby was always going to be a difficult task, and so it proved. With their defence scrambling off a Jelonch charge down the touchline, Dupont capitalised.

It left McFarland frustratingly hailing the impact of the French scrum-half, not just for his try-scoring but for his overall performance, but he still could not get away from the fact that his team saw the result get away from them.

“I think (the red card) was a critical one, their try at the end probably came off the back of that extra man and being so potent when the game is stretched,” admitted the head coach.

“I also look at their two tries, we gifted them two tries through poor pieces of defence, letting guys through on inside shoulders or an intercept pass in the space of five minutes. Ultimately that was a big difference in the game.

“I think there was another critical call on James Hume off his feet at the breakdown which for me was just not a penalty at all. That was a pretty critical moment. Outside of that, the red card and those two tries were the difference between the two teams.

“Having said that, when you watch their half-backs and the quality of their play, Dupont can kick from under his own posts to 45 metres from his line. We were piling pressure on them and he kicks it 45 metres, and he did that regularly. Basically from his own in-goal area, it’s next level, which is what you expect from the best player in the world.”