'They had too much power' - Richie Murphy realistic on European pain in Challenge Cup final loss to Montpellier

The 59-26 defeat brought the curtain down on a disappointing season for Ulster as they couldn’t end their 20-year trophy drought and also failed to make the play-offs in the United Rugby Championship – meaning they have missed out on playing in the Champions Cup for a season consecutive season.

“It was a very difficult day, we came up against a real powerhouse of French rugby right up at the top of the table and, ultimately, they had too much power for us tonight,” conceded Murphy, the Ulster head coach. “The power game put us under so much pressure and we just couldn’t handle it...once it became a set piece-dominated game it became very hard to live with that power.

“If you look at where Montpellier sit and you look at the teams they've been beating over the last number of weeks, they're one of the best teams in Europe.

“Obviously getting off to a good start and getting 7-0 up, unfortunately, we missed an exit which brought the game back to 7-7.

"At that stage we needed to keep on adding pressure through picking up points but the conditions out there were tough to play, our thought process was that we wanted to try and move these guys around but that was quite difficult with the ball the way it was.”

Despite conceding a record number of tries in a Challenge Cup final, conceding the most points ever in a final and losing by the biggest margin ever Murphy feels the team is still making strides forward.

“You can look at our season and people will decide whether it's good or bad," he said. “But we feel like we're moving in the right direction.

"An experience like tonight, albeit tough, can also be used as a driver to get better going forward.

“People will say this will define our season...I don’t see it that way.

"If you talk about the top eight (URC) as the goal that we were trying to set, Nathan’s (Doak) tackle (Stormers), last play of the game (Glasgow) there is a blatant penalty at the break down but Jake (Flannery) throws the ball.

"Most of the time it would bounce up but it runs past Bryn’s foot and goes into touch, if Bryn gets the ball he probably scores.

“If that’s what constitutes a failure or an underachievement in the season so be it.

“I have to look at ‘Have I prepared the team well? Have we moved them forward? Are our young players coming through and making an impression on the game? Do we get more players into the international jersey?

“Have we had a successful season in relation to the wins and loses that we have had and where are the points that we look at and go that is where we need to do better and create a plan around that in order to fix that?”