'We had our chances' - Richie Murphy frustration as Ulster suffer first home loss in URC blow

Stuart Lancaster’s side outscored their hosts by four tries to three in a 26-19 bonus point victory as Ulster slumped to a third defeat in five games.

Ulster coach Richie Murphy was disappointed with the result and aspects of his side’s performance.

“Typical inter-pro wasn't it...physical, they probably won a bit more of those battles than we did,” said Murphy. “We had our chances, unfortunately for Ben (Carson), drops the ball with a clear run to the line, we're on the goal line another time and we don't look after the ball and that ends up going 70 metres back down the pitch.

“So, a couple of chances, if we had of got ourselves ahead it could have been a different game, a couple of injuries early on, a couple of injuries in the team means that we weren't quite as cohesive as we normally would be,..it's very disappointing to concede our first loss here at Ravenhill this year.

“Physically they'd done really well, especially in and around the contact area, I think we still created enough opportunity, just probably weren't clinical enough in certain areas.

“Credit needs to go to Connacht, they turned up here, they had a plan and they executed it pretty well.”

Ulster had to pair Jacob Stockdale with Ben Carson in the centre, with Jonny Scott coming off the bench to make his debut.

“If you look at our centre stocks, we're missing Stuart McCloskey obviously through Six Nations, James Hume picked up a knock last week, Jude Postlethwaite is out,” said Murphy. “And then when we go down our more experienced academy players, both Willy de Klerk and Sam Berman are both out, so I think we've like six out of seven guys unavailable this week.

“Jonny Scott has obviously come through the 20s last year, I thought he'd done exceptionally well when he came on.

"He's a big strong physical ball carrier and we saw some of that tonight, so disappointing that we couldn't give him the win on his first cap but great to see him out there.”

“Jude isn't actually out as long as people may think, you know what I mean, he'll be back within a number of weeks, so we're just waiting to see how that progresses.

“Squad depth is huge isn't it, no matter who you are.

"If you put together a list of six centres, seven centres and five aren't available for certain reasons that has a massive impact on our team like it would on any other team.”

Ulster will look to get back to winning ways as they travel to Parma next Saturday for a clash with bottom-of-the-table Zebre.

“It's back on the horse, we've a big run-in, we go away to Zebre next week it's really important that you turn the page really quickly,” said Murphy. “There's learnings in it, we've got players coming in and out of our squad from Ireland this week, a couple of them will get a week off next week and it's just trying to balance up that until we get everyone fully back together and get the run in.”