{"id":571990,"date":"2026-03-29T11:57:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T11:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/571990\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T11:57:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T11:57:07","slug":"united-rugby-championship-ulster-have-to-look-after-the-ball-better-says-head-coach-richie-murphy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/571990\/","title":{"rendered":"United Rugby Championship: Ulster have to look after the ball better, says head coach Richie Murphy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ulster head coach Richie Murphy said his side &#8220;were a bit wasteful at times&#8221; during their 28-12 United Rugby Championship victory over Zebre in Parma.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Despite the home side being reduced to 14 men after Simone Gesi&#8217;s straight red card just before the half-hour mark, it was a tight and tense match.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The bonus-point win moves Murphy&#8217;s side up to third position in the URC table as they return to winning ways ahead of their Challenge Cup fixture against Ospreys at the Affidea Stadium.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We expected it to be really physical over here and that is what we got,&#8221; Murphy said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I suppose the red card early in the game gave us a bit more of an advantage and I thought from our point of view, we have to look after the ball better as we were a bit wasteful at times.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But very happy to get four tries. Coming over here is always very difficult.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Player of the Match Werner Kok, who scored the bonus-point try, believed that the turning point in the game was the start of the second half.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ulster scored three tries after the restart with Rob Herring, Zac Ward and Kok all able to cross the line. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We stopped playing when they went down to 14 and we tried to regroup again and the boys stuck together and played as a team,&#8221; Kok said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think the energy from the kick-off [in the second half] was the turning point. The boys stuck in there and that was the turning point for me.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ulster head coach Richie Murphy said his side &#8220;were a bit wasteful at times&#8221; during their 28-12 United&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-571990","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\/571990","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=571990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}