Richie Murphy hailed his side’s battling qualities in the wake of their 27-20 defeat to Leinster, with the pressure put on by the visitors ultimately taking its toll in this hard-fought interprovincial.
“(We showed) incredible fight, incredible commitment, guys playing for each other, playing as a team. (That is) really satisfying,” said Murphy, who now faces a winger crisis ahead of next weekend’s European opener at Toulouse.
“I thought our work rate was really good but it’s just very hard to play against Leinster at the moment, they’re in a situation where they’ve changed the way they play.
“They’re not as fluid in the attack anymore as they once were but what they are now is very hard to play against, massive pressure on your set-piece, massive pressure in their line speed and massive pressure at the breakdown.
“When you look at those things that makes it very hard to play.”
In a game of ebb and flow, Ulster had a chance to potentially tie things up again late on, only for a lost lineout to allow Leinster to clear their lines and take maximum points from the match.
“It comes back to a couple of things that we were trying to do during the week, we didn’t quite nail them on the day but a lot of that is around pressure,” he explained.
“Out there we are quite a young team, especially in the front row with a lack of experience, so they are learning on the job and we’ll be better for that, but it’s going to take a little bit of pain sometimes as well.”
Next up, Ulster travel to Toulouse for their opening European fixture in which they will have to deal with a winger shortage, with no Rob Baloucoune, Jacob Stockdale, Ben Moxham and potentially Werner Kok, while Aaron Sexton has departed for the NFL.
“The problem now is we’ve got a shortage around our back three,” said the Ulster head coach.
“We’re going to have to come up with a solution and see what that looks like next week.
“Toulouse in Toulouse is a huge task. But not only that, we have six days to go to Bordeaux, then six days to go to Munster which is a massive game in the URC, and then a seven-day turnaround to Connacht.
“So the run of games is particularly hard when you think you’re playing second in Europe being Leinster, first in Europe who are Toulouse who are now first in France at the moment, and Bordeaux who are second. So we are playing some of the best teams in the world at the moment.”