Ulster’s Jack Murphy says turning the Affidea Stadium into a “fortress” can help them reach their season’s goals.<\/p>\n
Last term, Richie Murphy’s side won five of their nine home games in the United Rugby Championship [URC], while going five wins from five in Europe’s Challenge Cup before losing in the final against Montpellier in Bilbao.<\/p>\n
Those dropped points in the league, which included a draw against the Stormers in their penultimate game, would come back to bite as they found themselves two points adrift of the URC play-off places and a spot in this year’s Investec Champions Cup.<\/p>\n
Maximising points at home is therefore imperative if they are to improve upon what began as a promising campaign last season.<\/p>\n
“When I was a young guy, everyone was calling Ulster this fortress,” the 22-year-old out-half told BBC Sport NI.<\/p>\n
“There are grounds you go to in Europe and the URC that are very tough to play in, so we want Ravenhill to feel like that.<\/p>\n
“We want to improve on where we got to last year. We weren’t happy with where we finished in the league and were bitterly disappointed with how Europe ended.<\/p>\n
“Turning our home games where we can win will make it easier to reach our goals.”<\/p>\n
Ulster kick-off the new URC campaign at home on Friday [19:45 BST] against Edinburgh who finished a disappointing 12th last season.<\/p>\n
Sean Everitt has brought in new faces to his coaching team at Hive Stadium, but Murphy is expecting a typically tough challenge from the Scottish side.<\/p>\n
“They’ve got a lot of threats across their team and some really good players,” he noted.<\/p>\n
“Our main focus on Friday is on ourselves and how we can impose ourselves on the game. We know they will be physical and bring a lot of intensity, so we’ve got to be ready.<\/p>\n
“It’s a really competitive league and probably got more competitive last season. Everybody is playing at a high level, every game is a battle. You have to keep going as it’s relentless, week on week.<\/p>\n
“We are going to try to start well on Friday and see where that gets us.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ulster’s Jack Murphy says turning the Affidea Stadium into a “fortress” can help them reach their season’s goals.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-780574","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\/780574","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=780574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}