Ulster 'right in the mix' for Richie Murphy despite weekend frustration

Ulster had the game won but as the clock ticked into the red winger Werner Kok was yellow-carded, the Scarlets kicked the resulting penalty to touch before producing a superb backline move which Ellis Mee finished off to give the Welsh region their first victory over the Belfast-based outfit in eight years.

“On the day we probably just weren't good enough, we had plenty of opportunities in the opposition 22, we put ourselves in a position to win the game with last play and we couldn't do it,” said Murphy. “If you look at it in the simplest terms, we give away a scrum penalty, there's a minor head contact which gets a yellow card and then off that maul they obviously put a good phase of play together and score.

“So, we have to congratulate Scarlets on their victory...they fought right till the end, some of the stuff that’s happening around maul, to stop our maul going forward is interesting and it's definitely worth having a look back at.

“We spent a lot of time in their half, in the second half, down on their goal line. We managed to break them down in the end, but then the minute they got into our half we gave away a silly penalty.

“Coming away to Wales is never easy and it's always tough, if you leave the game in the balance, you know that these Welsh clubs will come back at you later on.

“So, when we look at from 40 minutes to probably 60 minutes, we had opportunities to take the game away from them there and we couldn't quite do that, so we need to be better in that area.

“We had plenty of opportunity across the game, I think we had three tries chalked off...one of them, that's chalked off. I just can't see why it's chalked off. It's probably two of them that I can't see.

“I actually think our player doesn't knock that roll on either, but the forward pass you can't see.”

Despite the defeat, Murphy doesn’t think it will have long-term consequences on Ulster achieving a top-eight league finish.

“We get one point out of the game it's not what we wanted but we’re right in the mix, home game next week, really important that we finish this block on a high,” he said. “Our goal at the start of the season was always to get into the top eight and make sure that we get back into the Champions Cup, that goal hasn't changed.

“We'll dust ourselves down we’ve just got to keep trying to get better, this is a step backwards at the moment but we can use that and learn from it and move on.

“It's a really tough league, there's never any easy games, especially when you're away from home.

“We knew coming here, we looked at the Scarlets team, we knew that they were way better than the results that they had and it was really important that we turned up and put our best foot forward.

“I thought for large parts of the game we were just slightly under the level that we had been playing at.”