Ulster cruised to a 17 – 47 win against Zebre on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Parma, scoring seven tries in the process. Jared Payne claimed a hat trick, Tommy Bowe bagged a brace and Ruan Pienaar and Craig Gilroy chipped in with one apiece. 

I’d predicted that Ulster would wrap this one up by half time and that’s pretty much how it worked out with the bonus point in the back pocket by the 39th minute.

Ruan Pienaar started the ball rolling on the third minute, finishing off a break by Paddy Jackson who coasted through a mismatch on the blind-side, Jackson converted. Zebre replied through their feisty scrum half Guglielmo Palazzani four minutes later, after a prolonged maul, in an open but low intensity first quarter.

Tommy Bowe bumped his way through the hapless Italian defence on the twelfth minute, for his first of the afternoon, converted by Jackson, but Ulster still coughed up enough chances to keep the Italians in the hunt with Carlos Canna adding an eighteenth minute penalty to take the score to 10 – 14.

Craig Gilroy put some daylight between the teams when he latched onto a chip ahead by Pienaar, with Jackson again adding the extras, and the bonus point score came on the 39th minute when Jared Payne crossed after a sustained period of pressure in the Zebre 22. No conversion this time but Polazzani was yellow carded for an infringement in the build-up. 

Half time: Zebre 10 Ulster 26. 

Payne bagged his second shortly after the restart, putting some pace on the ball after a break by Bowe and Stuart Olding started to stutter and, with Jackson off, Pienaar added the extras. 

The Ulster fullback completed his hat trick on the 51st minute sliding through the Italian defence with a degree of ease and Pienaar converted to take the score to 10 – 40. 

It all got a bit scrappy after that, Ulster losing some fluidity with the departure of Jackson. Italian replacement, Ulrich Beyers, latched onto a loose ball to run clear for a score that wakened up the home support. Canna converted, but it was a brief flurry as the game became very stop start thereafter as the teams continued to empty their benches. 

Bowe injected some direction into the closing minutes as he ran clear to bag his second and Olding became the final name on the score-sheet when he knocked over the conversion.  

Final score: Zebre 17 Ulster 47

Piles of tries for Ulster’s classy back line but it was Sean Reidy and Pete Browne that caught the eye with their hard work in the loose causing the home team all sorts of problems. 

Ulster: Jared Payne, Tommy Bowe, Luke Marshall, Stuart Olding, Craig Gilroy, Paddy Jackson, Ruan Pienaar, Callum Black, Rory Best, Ricky Lutton Pete Browne, Franco van der Merwe, Iain Henderson, Sean Reidy, Roger Wilson. Replacements: Rob Herring, Kyle McCall, Andrew Warwick, Robbie Diack, Chris Henry, Paul Marshall, Darren Cave, Rory Scholes.