{"id":340927,"date":"2025-12-29T12:21:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T12:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/340927\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T12:21:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T12:21:15","slug":"connacht-24-29-ulster-we-played-some-good-rugby-richie-murphy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/340927\/","title":{"rendered":"Connacht 24-29 Ulster: ‘We played some good rugby’ – Richie Murphy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ulster head coach Richie Murphy says he was happy that his side “ground out” a 29-24 victory<\/a> over Connacht in their United Rugby Championship interprovincial in Galway on Saturday but added that things got “a little too close for comfort” as a late surge saw the westerners move to within two points.<\/p>\n

Ulster had to come from behind to claim a fifth bonus-point win of their URC campaign, scoring two tries in each half. <\/p>\n

Zac Ward scored twice for the northern province, with a Werner Kok touchdown and penalty try also contributing to the win.<\/p>\n

Connacht, who had led 10-0 in the first-half, scored late tries through Sean Jansen and Matthew Devine to cut the deficit to a couple of points, but Jack Murphy’s late penalty made the game safe.<\/p>\n

“It was a little disappointing [conceding two late tries] but you’re always aware that you are in Connacht and Connacht are never going to give up without a fight,” reflected Murphy.<\/p>\n

“A lot of credit has to go to them for how they finished the game and at the end we’re hanging on there.<\/p>\n

“We’ll look at how we get better in those final 20 minutes and really we just have to keep doing the things we were doing earlier in the half. We just kind of went into our shell a little bit. It’s really important we keep going after the game.”<\/p>\n

The Ulster coach thought his side was deserving of their victory after some enterprising play.<\/p>\n

“It was a cagey first 10 minutes or so, then Connacht got their try, but I thought we played some really good rugby in the second period of that first half when we started moving the ball and bringing some of our big outside backs into the game and they’re a handful for any team.<\/p>\n

“We started to move the ball into space and we were much more effective with ball in hand.<\/p>\n

“We brought on two international standard props [Angus Bell and Tom O’Toole] at half-time. That’s what we were thinking about, getting them involved early, try to sort out the scrum a little bit and also give us a little bit of carry power.<\/p>\n

“Both of them were pretty effective and did quite well for us in that second half.”<\/p>\n

Back row Juarno Augustus was forced off the pitch through injury in the second half, with “an ankle sprain”, with Murphy revealing that the initial impression post-match was that it was “not as serious as it first looked”.<\/p>\n

Ulster remain fifth in the URC table and host Munster in Belfast next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ulster head coach Richie Murphy says he was happy that his side “ground out” a 29-24 victory over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-340927","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}