Ulster head coach Richie Murphy praised Mark Sexton after the province made it two bonus point wins from two games in the United Rugby Championship by beating the Bulls at Ravenhill.

Sexton was appointed Ulster’s attack coach moving to Belfast from Connacht in the summer to reunite with Murphy after the pair worked together at Ireland U20 level.

Under Sexton Ulster have showed a more clinical edge, scoring 10 tries in two games and sit fifth in table with a game in hand.

“I think Mark has had a real big impact on the lads coming in,” enthused Murphy. “Mark has had a big influence on that over the last couple of weeks.

placeholder image — Ulster Rugby Head Coach Richie Murphy. (Photo by Arthur Allison/Pacemaker Press)

“I thought our players were brave in relation to how they moved the ball to the space.

“Mark's been encouraging them since he's come up here to be brave and to move the ball, we saw that, a couple of times we went through them and a couple of times we went around the outside of them.

“The lads are pretty disappointed with how things finished last year. I think it's a combined effort from everybody in the place, I think the coaching team at the moment is working really well together, helping each other out and trying to drive the lads forward, the players are really responsive, they're working really hard.

“They're hard on each other in training – the level of training this year is a level up, some of that is just because we've got more fit players in our squad,” he added.

“We're getting a first team and a second team competing against each other; last year we were probably missing quite a number of first team starters.”

Murphy described the 28-7 win over the Bulls as one of the best during his tenure at Ulster.

“Definitely, absolutely blown away by the lads' commitment, their work ethic, their grit to stay in the fight,” he said.

“A couple of times, some of the goal-line sets – one in the first half, a couple in the second half – just unbelievable, no one really stops the Bulls when they get in there so to be able to do that is a massive step forward for us.

“I thought defensively, we worked really hard for each other, even when we were broken a couple of times, we worked really hard to get back, we wouldn't have probably seen that before.

“It just shows the team is building nicely. We still feel like there's loads of things we can be better at, but a really positive night, we've just got to build on that and go forward now.

"It's hard to get quick ball against the Bulls because they're so big and so physical. In the first half, we felt we couldn't get our game going but the game broke up a little bit in the second half.”