{"id":172284,"date":"2025-09-27T07:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T07:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/172284\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T07:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T07:43:10","slug":"ulster-rugby-province-still-have-plenty-to-work-on-despite-six-try-win-against-dragons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/172284\/","title":{"rendered":"Ulster Rugby: Province still have &#8216;plenty to work on&#8217; despite six-try win against Dragons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ulster head coach Richie Murphy felt his side&#8217;s opening performance of the United Rugby Championship season was &#8220;as you&#8217;d expect but probably not as you would like&#8221; after a 42-21 win over Dragons on Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The northern province shipped three tries in the win and, despite scoring six of their own, occasionally undermined promising attacking play with errors or breakdown penalties.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Murphy said his side &#8220;looked shaky&#8221; after conceding <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/cddmgqlv8l2o\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">just 12 seconds into the game<\/a> through a score he felt should have been chalked off but was &#8220;delighted&#8221; to start the campaign with five points in Belfast.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I thought at times we played some really good rugby [but] probably didn&#8217;t finish enough. So plenty to work on there and defensively I thought we looked better at times, but disappointed to concede three tries,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was kind of as you&#8217;d expect, but probably not as you would like. We go, we prepare, we come up with these plans in relation to how we&#8217;re going to break down the opposition, and you can see a lot of them going right, but then there&#8217;s one or two that just go wrong and that&#8217;s always going to happen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s just how you deal with that and how you move on.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With only one pre-season contest under their belts, Murphy felt his side &#8220;looked a little tired&#8221; in the second half but said the run-out will be &#8220;massive&#8221; moving forward as they prepare for next week&#8217;s visit to Edinburgh where they were beaten 47-17 to end their disappointing 2024-25 season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We came here looking for five points. We started with a really positive win,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We go to Edinburgh next week and we have a point to prove over there.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ulster head coach Richie Murphy felt his side&#8217;s opening performance of the United Rugby Championship season was &#8220;as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172285,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-172284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}