Winless Ulster face two-week reset with 15 players away on international duty

Ulster head coach Richie Murphy has acknowledged his side must go back to the drawing board during the URC’s enforced international break, after a winless start to the season that included a demoralising 33-7 defeat to the Stormers in Cape Town last weekend.

The Irish province have drawn twice and lost three times in the URC so far, with their South African tour proving particularly brutal. A 34-26 defeat to the Bulls in Pretoria was followed by the heavy loss at the Stormers, leaving Murphy to concede that Ulster’s scrum was repeatedly torn apart by the physicality of the southern hemisphere sides’ front fives.

“The scrum played a major role in the outcome of the game,” Murphy said after the Cape Town defeat. A critical scrum penalty in the closing stages against the Bulls cost Ulster a losing bonus point, while the Stormers inflicted four consecutive scrum penalties in a first-half window before a second-half Ulster scrum was driven backwards and resulted in a yellow card for Keynan Knox.

The reset is complicated by the scale of Ulster’s international call-ups. Sixteen frontline players are unavailable, with nine — including James McNabney, Tom O’Toole, Tom Stewart, Nick Timoney, Jamie Benson, Nathan Doak, Stuart McCloskey, Jacob Stockdale and Rob Baloucoune — named in Ireland’s Nations Championship squad and unavailable until December. A further six Ulster players have been selected for the Ireland XV development squad to face Fiji ‘A’ this month, while veteran lock Iain Henderson remains sidelined through injury.

“It is a funny time, because we will have 15 guys away till the third week of this break,” Murphy said. “We’ll get about two weeks of preparation with most of the guys back.”

Murphy was candid about the challenge of managing such a depleted squad across the opening weeks of the season. “We’re not used to having 10 Irish players during the off-season. Reintegrating them back into our squad over these first five games, and now we lose them again — that puts us under a little bit of pressure.”

Despite the difficult run, Murphy maintained that Ulster are “not a million miles away” from where they need to be, pointing to earlier signs of resilience. The province recovered from a home defeat to Edinburgh (29-34) to draw with Glasgow Warriors (33-33 away) and Munster (26-26 at home), and recorded a 40-21 Challenge Cup win over Zebre in Parma.

Ulster do not resume their URC campaign until December 5, when they travel to Cardiff Arms Park to face Cardiff. Murphy said the squad will focus on “a lot of everything” during the break as they look to address the structural issues exposed on tour.