RICHIE MURPHY HAS pledged that Ulster will not give up the fight to break back into the URC’s top eight following the province’s 22-19 defeat to the Sharks in Belfast.
Ulster’s second consecutive league loss has dented their hopes of knockout rugby and now leaves them 12th in the table and three points behind Benetton Rugby who sit just inside the playoff zone.
With two fixtures remaining and both away, at ninth-placed Munster and Edinburgh who sit in 10th, Ulster now have it all to do to with qualification for next season’s Champions Cup also on the line.
“We’ll be fighting all the way to the end,” vowed Murphy whose side fell short of closing out their final regular season home game after building an early 19-0 lead.
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“Until there’s nothing left to play for, we’ll be playing, and I think we’ve shown that over the last number of weeks some great commitment out of the lads.
“We put some really good rugby together at times and then really struggled in the second half to contain the power game that they threw at us.
“The funny thing is,” he said, “we still probably would have needed to win, you know, the last two games no matter what happened (against the Sharks).
“We’ve got one point out of that (taking them to 38 points); we’re probably looking at 47 points getting through into the top eight,” the coach added.
Ulster had made a ferocious start through first half tries from Jack Murphy, Jude Postlethwaite and Nathan Doak – with the excellent Jacob Stockdale at full back providing assists for two of the scores – but failed to move the scoreboard on from the half hour mark as the Sharks racked up three of their own tries before Jordan Hendrikse’s 77th minute penalty sealed their comeback.
“We didn’t have the ball,” Murphy explained of the second half which had Ulster leading 19-5 when it kicked off and Stockdale in the bin.
“You can’t score if you don’t have the ball.
“For the 13 minutes after half-time, we kicked the ball off, we didn’t really have the ball again except for when we were on our own goal line.
“We found it really hard to get out of our end from that, from half-time on. If you think about the amount of phase play we had in the second half, it was very little.
“Unfortunately, their power game came into the thing and we couldn’t quite handle it,” he said.
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'We’ll be fighting all the way to the end' - Richie Murphy pledges Ulster will keep battling
RICHIE MURPHY HAS pledged that Ulster will not give up the fight to break back into the URC’s top eight following the province’s 22-19 defeat to the Sharks in Belfast.
Ulster’s second consecutive league loss has dented their hopes of knockout rugby and now leaves them 12th in the table and three points behind Benetton Rugby who sit just inside the playoff zone.
With two fixtures remaining and both away, at ninth-placed Munster and Edinburgh who sit in 10th, Ulster now have it all to do to with qualification for next season’s Champions Cup also on the line.
“We’ll be fighting all the way to the end,” vowed Murphy whose side fell short of closing out their final regular season home game after building an early 19-0 lead.
“Until there’s nothing left to play for, we’ll be playing, and I think we’ve shown that over the last number of weeks some great commitment out of the lads.
“We put some really good rugby together at times and then really struggled in the second half to contain the power game that they threw at us.
“The funny thing is,” he said, “we still probably would have needed to win, you know, the last two games no matter what happened (against the Sharks).
“We’ve got one point out of that (taking them to 38 points); we’re probably looking at 47 points getting through into the top eight,” the coach added.
Ulster had made a ferocious start through first half tries from Jack Murphy, Jude Postlethwaite and Nathan Doak – with the excellent Jacob Stockdale at full back providing assists for two of the scores – but failed to move the scoreboard on from the half hour mark as the Sharks racked up three of their own tries before Jordan Hendrikse’s 77th minute penalty sealed their comeback.
“We didn’t have the ball,” Murphy explained of the second half which had Ulster leading 19-5 when it kicked off and Stockdale in the bin.
“You can’t score if you don’t have the ball.
“For the 13 minutes after half-time, we kicked the ball off, we didn’t really have the ball again except for when we were on our own goal line.
“We found it really hard to get out of our end from that, from half-time on. If you think about the amount of phase play we had in the second half, it was very little.
“Unfortunately, their power game came into the thing and we couldn’t quite handle it,” he said.
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