Murphy family affair as Ulster get ready for Benetton visit to Kingspan

The 20-year-old has left his native province Leinster to hook up with his father at the Kingspan Stadium – and with Jake Flannery carrying an injury, Murphy could be in line to make his Ulster debut against Benetton in Saturday night’s home pre-season friendly.

“Myself and Jack when we started working with the under 20s together we went to see a guy called Daragh Sheridan who works in the IRFU as a high performance coach/manager,” said Murphy. “He got the two of us to talk about it and what we expected and we have gone through a lot of that stuff in relation to me understanding him and him understanding me and the difference between me being his father when I go home and being his coach out there.

“So, Jack runs with it, gives me a few cheeky looks now and again but he’s fine and fitted in really well up here, like Sam Berman as well...he’s fitted in really well.

“Some of these guys will be around the team on Saturday, they might play, they might not.”

Last season ended in failure as Ulster exited both the URC and Europe at the quarter-stages. After only coming in over late March and with a full pre-season now under his belt, Murphy is confident the team can implement his game plan.

“I can’t speak for the fans but towards the back end of last year they would have got a feel for some of the things we were trying to do,” said Murphy. “I think we’re a little bit further down the track in relation to that, although we have lost other senior members of that squad who were there towards the back end of that season like Billy (Burns) and Will Addison and players like that.

“What tends to happen in these situations is that when there is a void somebody tends to put up their hand and steps in there and, from a leadership point of view, some of the mid 20-year-olds have really stepped up and the guys are in good spirits.

“The information from coach to player and player to coach is strong now so we hope to build on that through the year.”

Murphy added: “All our recruitment was nearly done before I came in and I’m very happy with the squad we have under the circumstances that we have here at Ulster at the moment.

“We’re going to be a young side, we’re hoping to play an exciting brand of rugby.

“On days they click they’ll be very good and some days they’ll struggle and I think from our point of view as coaches as guardians of that group we have to point them in the right direction, try to hold them to high standards on a daily basis and try to drive Ulster Rugby forward on the back of the success of the younger guys earlier on this summer.”

As usual in pre-season games, the result won’t be the be-all-and-end-all on Saturday.

“We’ve been working on a number of things in pre-season so it would be nice to see some of them out there,” said Murphy. “I was at Connacht against Sale at the weekend and pre-season games are always a little bit scrappy, from our point-of-view we want to have a look at a large number of players and want to give them the opportunity to put their hand up after a good pre-season.

“From a team tactical point-of-view try to put in place some of the things we’ve been working on.”