Ulster left it late for the second week in a row for John Cooney to kick the winning penalty after staging a 20 point come back over a strong Edinburgh side..

Will Addison kick-started the revival with a try in the second half before John Cooney and Craig Gilroy followed suit to decrease the deficit to one point.

Edinburgh raced into a 13-0 lead after 16 minutes thanks to two penalties from Simon Hickey and a Tom Brown try. Henry Pyrgos floated a lovely ball over the Gilroy to find the Edinburgh winger who crossed in the corner. John Cooney got Ulster on the scoreboard with a penalty before Hickey added his third penalty of the evening.

A third penalty from Cooney left the Ulster trailing by ten points at the break while James Johnstone crossed for Edinburgh with five minutes played in the second half. Jordi Murphy went close for Ulster at the end of the first half but was ruled to have been in touch before he grounded the ball.

Will Addison crossed for Ulster’s first try on 53 minutes. Cooney made the break and after going through several phases, Billy Burns found Addison after a great dummy run from Stuart McCloskey. With the scores 23-13 in the favour of Edinburgh, Simon Hickey extended his side’s lead to 13 points with a penalty three minutes after the try.

The second try followed eight minutes after Addison’s. The former Sale Shark made the line-break creating the two-on-one and the ever-present John Cooney was on hand to narrow the deficit to six points.

With 12 minutes left, Ulster received a massive break when the ball fell fortunately to Henry Speight. The Australian winger found Cooney who shifted the ball to Craig Gilroy. Ulster’s winger pinned the ears back and ran in from 60m. Cooney knocked over the conversion to give the home side the lead for the first time in the match.

Simon Hickey thought he had knocked over the winning penalty with a minute left on the clock but Alan O’Connor expertly recovered the ball for Ulster from the restart at the restart. Stuart Berry bravely awarded Ulster a penalty and Cooney stepped up and knocked it over from 40m in what was the last action of the match.

Definitely a smash and grab for Ulster.