Ulster hooker Tom Stewart admits “I don’t think I’ve come to the party well enough” and says the squad must have “honest conversations” after an underwhelming start to the season. <\/p>\n
Successive draws with Glasgow and Munster after a loss to Edinburgh leaves Ulster winless in the United Rugby Championship before starting their Challenge Cup campaign away to Zebre next week. <\/p>\n
Head coach Richie Murphy said he was “bitterly disappointed” after his side were forced to fight back for a 26-26 draw with Munster, while Stewart questioned his own contributions to the game in Belfast.<\/p>\n
“From a personal point of view, I’m not happy with my performances about it. I don’t think I’ve come to the party well enough, I don’t know if it’s my preparation or the mental side to the game,” said Stewart, who captained Ulster against Glasgow and Munster in the injured Iain Henderson’s absence.<\/p>\n
“It’s something I really need to have a look at and plan better or whatever it is, but I need to start understanding why that is the case.”<\/p>\n
Stewart, who marked his seventh Ireland cap with a try against Japan over the summer, added: “From my own point of view, I need to properly watch back my intent in some of the collisions and my actual process around what I’m doing.<\/p>\n
“Then I think we need to have some honest conversations this week within ourselves, with the team, players and coaches to see where we’re at.”<\/p>\n
Ulster travel to Zebre on Saturday (15:15 BST) before travelling to South Africa for difficult URC assignments against the Bulls and Stormers. <\/p>\n
For Stewart, Ulster “can’t shy away” from the shortcomings in their performances as they strive to kick-start their season. <\/p>\n
“It’s hard, when you have a game like that you don’t want to watch it back,” added the 25-year-old. <\/p>\n
“You don’t want to review yourself properly, you don’t want to look at the hard stuff, the nitty-gritty that you haven’t done well, but that’s where you find the fixes, the learnings. <\/p>\n
“The hardest stuff you watch will be the most impactful stuff going forward.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ulster hooker Tom Stewart admits “I don’t think I’ve come to the party well enough” and says the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-799983","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\/799983","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=799983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}