Marty Moore admits he relishes the physical battles

What won’t live long in the memory was the 13 minutes of endless scrums in the shadow of the Blues posts that led to the Ulster full back going over.

Prop Marty Moore though enjoyed the prolonged period of set pieces to enable him to show his scrummaging prowess.

“We were keeping the pressure on them, if we’d taken the points and just came away with three, I don’t know that it would felt just,” he explained.

“I was happy to keep at it, I know the referee had their tight-head under a bit of pressure, I think they were on a final warning just before that last scrum when Mikey got in for the try.

“He was probably a little reluctant to make the call having sin-binned the six just a couple of minutes previously.

“I think in that situation, the night was in it, it was good to see Billy (Burns) backing us forwards to keep turning that screw.

“Cardiff made no bones about it, they picked a physical team to try and beat us up so it was good he had that faith in us.

“It wasn’t the prettiest but it was good to get there in the end.

“The question was posed but if your captain (Billy Burns) is asking you the question, it pretty much means that’s what he wants to go with.

“It’s a question that doesn’t often need an answer, it was an area that we needed to impose ourselves on the game.

“There were things that could have gone better but credit to Cardiff, they fronted up there and, if it meant we had to go out the back off a scrum, we’re happy enough.”

The constant scrums did take a toll on Moore however.

“It’s one of those things, if you haven’t really done it you might not appreciate how fatiguing it is,” he said

“It’s probably the least I’ve ran in a game in the last month, but definitely, the most fatigued I’ve been.

“I don’t know how to describe it, it’s just the lactic acid build-up, so you kind of get jelly legs when you get out of a scrum and try to run after the play.

“If it happens it happens, but hopefully, we don’t have a recurrence of that to that extent.”

Moore has started every one of Ulster’s four games this season and is glad to back in the No3 shirt.

“It’s no secret that I struggled with fitness when I came back after the lockdown period,” he admitted

“A goal that I had for myself, but one that helps the squad as well, was to get back to being able to put in those 70 minute performances.

“It’s something I’m still chipping away at but it’s definitely down to those extra bits of training.

“Everyone has some area that they need to put that extra work into, that’s my area that I just have to keep focussing on.

“I’m quite happy to have been able the last few weeks to go long enough stints in that three jersey and hopefully it continues.”