Ulster head coach Richie Murphy said his side lacked a clinical edge in their 26-19 defeat by Connacht in Belfast on Friday.<\/p>\n
After a tight first half, the sides went in level at the break before a strong second-half display from the visitors extended their unbeaten run to four games.<\/p>\n
The result is Ulster’s first defeat of the season at home and ends Connacht’s four-game losing run against Murphy’s side.<\/p>\n
“Connacht played some really nice rugby in the back of the second half when they got some speed into the game,” Murphy said after the game.<\/p>\n
“We are bitterly disappointed. Defending at the Affidea was something we were really proud of and something that we need to go back to the drawing board with.”<\/p>\n
A late surge from the home side saw them claim a losing bonus point which sees them move up to second in the URC table, three points behind Glasgow Warriors who face Leinster on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Despite missing key players including Stuart McCloskey, Rob Baloucoune, Cormac Izuchukwu and James Hume, Murphy was frustrated that his injury-impacted side couldn’t make their chances count.<\/p>\n
“We created a few chances that we didn’t capitalise on which is disappointing,” he continued. <\/p>\n
“We weren’t clinical enough. Sometimes, these things happen.<\/p>\n
“Some bounces of the ball didn’t really go our way but at least we got ourselves a point and we will be ready to go to Zebre next week.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ulster head coach Richie Murphy said his side lacked a clinical edge in their 26-19 defeat by Connacht…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-488956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488956","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=488956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}