ULSTER HAVE BEEN rocked by injuries to Stuart McCloskey and Zac Ward as they bid to halt a five-game losing streak at Connacht on Saturday.
Ireland centre McCloskey may be sidelined for a potentially lengthy period due to the hamstring injury picked up in last weekend’s defeat to Munster and could now even be a doubt for Ireland’s Six Nations campaign which begins on February 1 when England visit Dublin.
“Stuart has a significant hamstring injury and will miss at this stage quite a large number of weeks,” said Murphy whose side are now 11th in the URC table, one place behind Connacht.
“We’re not sure exactly what that (timeframe) is, but we won’t see him for the next good few weeks.”
Winger Zac Ward shipped an ankle issue against Munster and Murphy said that a call on his fitness will be made later this week.
Nick Timoney, Ben Carson and Nathan Doak will be available as should Cormac Izuchukwu while it is unclear if Iain Henderson, Ethan McIlroy and Jake Flannery will be with an already injury-hit squad.
Meanwhile, Murphy could well have his two sons facing off in Saturday’s interprovincial, Ben for Connacht and the younger Jack for Ulster after the latter debuted last Friday against Munster.
“Christmas Day will be very interesting because we’re all getting together spending it and most of St Stephen’s Day together,” said Murphy.
In terms of potentially letting slip any inside information, Murphy said: “Ben won’t tell us, we won’t be telling him.
“It’ll be good to spend a bit of time with the family. We’re very proud of the two lads, they work very hard at their craft, and we’ll see what happens at the weekend.”
“It’s more of a sideshow for my wife,” he added of the family’s provincial divisions. “She’s the one that has to deal with all three of us. I haven’t been a very happy husband over the last couple of weeks,” he said of Ulster’s recent dismal run.
Murphy continued:
“There are plenty of sleepless nights and getting up early and trying to work things out, I think when I came in last year, I almost felt we got lucky with a couple of wins and we kind of feel we’re on the other side of that now.
“We’re not a million miles away, 14 men for 50 minutes (against Munster) I think we were the better side, but we lost. Ultimately we have to get over the line and win those ones.”
Ulster were the better side but URC officiating let the game slip away. URC need better training and follow up after each game to improve officiating. I understand that this is the process but evidently it’s not working as the quality of officiating across the URC is not good. Nika Amashukeli should be the benchmark as he’s one of the best in the world.
@Con Cussed: Yes, he’s very good and Piardi is decent. Sam Grove-White is on the whistle for the warm up interpro (with Mighty Mike as TMO) and brace yourself for Brace at the main event in Galway.
@Con Cussed: They may have been the better team but not by much. Sloppiness by Munster helped. The ease with which Munster scored most of their tries imo showed a lack of concentration by Ulster. Naturally it’s hard to stay fully focused for 80+ minutes but once you’ve let in 2 easy tries collectively a team has to say no more.
@Con Cussed: Cooney was absolutely shocking, so slow from the base of the ruck, making poor decisions. With Doak they absolutely win that game
@Con Cussed: Not as I saw it. Ulster were hammering the Munster defence line and just could not get through. At least not until Hodnett, Wycherley and Ryan were called ashore. Last season Ulster were prolific from the maul not on Friday night. The Munster defence was teak tough. Referee gave 17 penalties against Munster Munster’s academy substitutes committed several technical infringements. Hopefully lessons learned. Munster were warned twice for repeated infringements – once in the first quarter, once in the final quarter, Munster player binned for repeated penalties. You obviously feel that the ref “let the game slip away”. Are you saying the ref was at fault for not ensuring Ulster won?
@Con Cussed: can anyone lose a rugby match these days without it been the refs fault?
@Cormac McCarthy: The yellow card would have been a yellow anyway and Whitehouse’s failure to follow up on his warnings was extremely poor officiating.
@Justin Robinson: Ref blew for a tackle off the ball. As per his mic. Not a yellow card offence.
@TL55: You also have to take into account that Ulster only had 14 players for most of the game. It’s a bit like a house of cards, once one falls the rest come with it. So the first of those tries was really the cards falling down, up until then Ulster were competing well and scoring. I still think the last try from Munster should have been disallowed due to the previous high tackle on Werner Kok, which should have been a penalty at least for Ulster.
@chris mcdonnell: This one was a bit more blatant than others. You expect to get an equal treatment for both teams, this wasn’t the case for Ulster.
@Cormac McCarthy: Not at all. The referee is to be neutral, just he made a lot of mistakes, including that last tackle on Kok which should have been a penalty to Ulster, if not a yellow card.
@Cormac McCarthy: Interesting. I’d not watched the game back but I can now see you’re right. It’s not clear JP would even have tried to offload to Morgan, although he did very well to then pop it up to Cooney. Is it possible for two different players to be carded following the same passage of play?
@Con Cussed: I went back to review the incident. Could not see anything in it. Nash hit him hard around the body with a clean wrap. If there was head contact it was secondary motion and from my viewing impossible to identify. Incidents like this happen throughout the game for example tackle on Scannell on 74 minutes. As others have said once the ref is consistent there can be no complaints. Munster’s lines of running and off loading in the tackle (sometimes off the ground) was very impressive.