{"id":311767,"date":"2025-11-27T08:12:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T08:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/311767\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T08:12:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T08:12:19","slug":"ulster-determined-to-get-back-to-winning-ways-against-benetton-rugby-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/311767\/","title":{"rendered":"Ulster determined to get back to winning ways against Benetton Rugby \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

With three wins from their four games played, including an impressive turning over of the Sharks in Durban, Ulster<\/a> are plotting hard to continue their upward curve as they prepare to meet Benetton Rugby<\/a> in Belfast on Friday.<\/p>\n

Having tasted defeat for the first time this season in their previous outing at the Lions<\/a>, there is a marked determination to hit back hard and particularly so ahead of kick-starting the Challenge Cup<\/a> campaign at home to Racing 92 next week.<\/p>\n

Though the loss of Stuart McCloskey when on Ireland duty is a blow, Ulster head coach Richie Murphy does have the powerful centre\u2019s fellow national squad members Nick Timoney, Iain Henderson and Jacob Stockdale all available and may even get Juarno Augustus (arm) and Cormac Izuchukwu (foot) back in harness again against the Italians. Utility back Stewart Moore has been brought back from his brief loan spell at Newcastle due to the absences of McCloskey and Michael Lowry.<\/p>\n

New signing Angus Bell, who arrived in Belfast earlier this week after being on duty with Australia, will sit this one out and hopefully be available for the Racing clash.<\/p>\n

Though disappointed with the defeat in Johannesburg back on October 25th \u2013 Ulster did take a try bonus point to make it six points from their trip to South Africa \u2013 Murphy is upbeat for what could now be achieved over the course of the 10-game block now facing the northern province.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had a good few weeks, so the guys got 10 days off and then came back in. We had obviously 10 guys go away with the Ireland A team (against Spain), which took a week out of that and we had four with the national senior team, but the other guys that were left here worked really hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe focus areas that we took from the first four weeks (of games), we\u2019ve concentrated really hard on trying to improve and hopefully we\u2019ll see the benefits from that on Friday,\u201d Murphy added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have been much better in relation to being on the same page,\u201d he stated of Ulster\u2019s notable achievements from the first block of games.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s improved massively, I think both attack and defence. We look harder to score against and we\u2019re scoring plenty of tries and we\u2019re looking after the ball well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose areas have been really positive. It\u2019s now balancing that up and improving in and around our set-piece and a lot of work has gone into that as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With three wins from their four games played, including an impressive turning over of the Sharks in Durban,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,176642,46102,176643,176641,760,85,176640,176639,134441],"class_list":["post-311767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-iain-henderson","tag-ireland-rugby","tag-jacob-stockdale","tag-richie-murphy","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-stuart-mccloskey","tag-ulster-rugby","tag-united-rugby-championship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311767","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=311767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}