Dan McFarland praise for Luke Marshall and Stuart McCloskey as Ulster start new season with victory over Connacht

Both sides had shown early season rust in the first quarter and the game was scoreless until 27 minutes when the Ulster midfield duo unlocked the Connacht defence.

From a rolling maul Nathan Doak fed McCloskey, who ran hard at a couple of defenders, freeing his right hand to offload just before taking contact to put Marshall under the posts.

McFarland said: “In another man’s world Stu plays every game for Ireland in the last five years but it depends what you want and he offers so much.

“To say he should be playing every week is also taking away from the guys that there is in that position - Ireland have got British Lions playing there.

“You could say he is unlucky that he is in a cohort of centres in Ireland that are playing at an unbelievable level.

“I’d love to see Stu wearing an Ireland jersey and I think he would be brilliant, he offers a slightly different dimension to other players,” McFarland added.

“I think one of the problems in the past was he was labelled early on as just being a dump truck up the middle of the pitch.

“He is ridiculously skilful, his ability to take the ball to the line and pull back those passes - he is one of the best around and I’m sure if his name was called, he’d do a great job.”

Apart from his try Marshall had the Connacht defence on the backfoot with his hard abrasive style of running with ball in hand.

McFarland said: “It is the first game Luke has started for a while, he is the heartbeat of the team. He is so proud to wear the jersey and every minute you watch him out there you can see it just oozing out of him.

“He always looks exhausted from about 30 minutes into the game, but it doesn’t stop him from going.

“He is a great defender as well and offers something slightly different from Stu; his hard lines path, he run at pace, he is difficult to defend and it is great that we have his experience in there beside some of the young centres.”

McFarland said he was satisfied to get maximum points against his former club.

“Anytime we get a win in an interpro we are happy and a bonus point is very pleasing,” he said.

“Connacht are a good team and they have caused us trouble in the past, particularly around breakdown and physicality of the line and disrupting out attacking game.

“I was pleased with how our breakdown worked but not our accuracy, we created quite a lot but we won’t as accurate as we need to be.”

Marshall’s try was followed by hooker Tom Stewart touching down, Nathan Doak converted both.

Conor Fitzgerald’s penalty reduced Ulster’s half-time lead to 14-3.

Doak was on target with a 44th minute penalty and the scrum-half went over for Ulster’s third try from close range.

Stewart Moore got Ulster’s bonus point try with Connacht’s Pete Boyle in the sin bin.

Caolin Blade finished a sweeping move for the visitors with David Hawkshaw converting.

Ulster replacement prop Callum Reid got the final try with Doak converting.

Ulster: S Moore, R Baloucoune, L Marshall, S McCloskey, J Stockdale, B Burns, N Doak, E O’Sullivan, T Stewart, M Moore; A O’Connor (capt), S Carter; Matty Rea, Marcus Rea, D McCann.

Replacements: J Andrew for Stewart 59 mins mins, C Reid for O’Sullivan 58 mins, J Toomaga-Allen for M Moore 64 mins, C Izuchukwu for Carter 58 mins, J Murphy for McCann 58 mins, D Shanahan for Burns 64 mins, A Curtis for Mcloskey 54 mins, A Sexton for Baloucoune 77 mins,

Connacht: T O’Halloran; B Ralston, T Farrell, T Daly, J Porch, C Fitzgerald, K Marmion, P Dooley, D Heffernan, J Aungier, G Thornbury (capt), L Fifita, J Murphy, C Oliver, P Boyle.

Replacements: D Tierney-Martin for Heffernan 50 mins, D Buckley for Dooley 50 mins, S Illofor Aungier 57 mins, N Murray for Fifita 60 mins, S Hurley-Langton for Oliver 41 mins, C Blade for Marmion 50 mins, D Hawkshaw for Fitzgerald 48 mins, A Wotton for T Farrell 34 mins.

Ref: E Cross (IRFU).