Connacht Rugby

A winning start to Ulster's BKT United Rugby Championship campaign with a bonus point 36-10 home victory over Connacht. It would seem it was written in the ...

After a superb kick by Billy Burns leading to a 5 metre Ulster lineout, it put the crowd into good voice and the team with good momentum. After a half-way back line move gone wrong, it led to good fortune as it brought a great break for Ulster down the wing resulting in a line out. Too many penalties by the opposition leading to a yellow card for opposition number 8, Peter Dooley. The resulting line out leading to a try for hooker, Tom Stewart, on his first competitive start, after having already created a few menacing runs in attack throughout the game so far. Making it 17-3 early in the second half. Nathan Doak added the conversion.

Veteran Luke Marshall opened the scoring and after Stewart's effort, Nathan Doak got over in the second half as did Stewart Moore and Callum Reid. Doak kicked ...

Hawkshaw added the two points. Connacht managed a rare break out with 10 minutes to go and Blade got on the end of a pass to score near the posts. Connacht managed a solitary try from Caolin Blade in the second half, with their only other points coming from a Conor Fitzgerald penalty and David Hawkshaw conversion.

Connacht's Paul Boyle gets yellow-carded. Image: Ben Brady/INPHO. ANDY FRIEND, THE Connacht director of rugby, lamented his side's discipline after their heavy ...

We created a lot but we weren’t as accurate as we needed to be. Ulster coach, Dan McFarland, added: “Any time we get a win in an interpro we’re happy and a bonus-point win is very pleasing. “We kicked the next penalty and came in at half time, and weren’t happy, but we said we knew it’s tough to win up here. “But going to South Africa, there is actually no better challenge for us because we have some pretty high desires of what we want to achieve this year. For us as a group, the coaches will always look at what we’ve done to make that happen.” “We gave away five penalties in eight minutes.

No one would have predicted that Tom Stewart would have said that of him before kick-off but at the end of a night when the Ulster maul contributed to four of ...

Sure enough, with 63 minutes clocked, they got their fourth try, Stewart Moore with it, touching down in the right corner after a smart pass by Billy Burns. None of their starters were having a shocker by any means but, at the same time, no one was putting their hand up to alert Andy Farrell to their credentials. It was the smart call. His attributes aren’t just limited to his goalkicking – he landed five from six by the way. Looking at the final score, you could say the same about Ulster, but the win obscures the fact they were rusty. He did enough to suggest he can get back to his best.

Midway through the second half on an unusually good night for rugby in Ravenhill — it didn't rain — Connacht set about the home team with the zeal of ...

When new boy Tom Stewart came off the back of a maul he was bracing for contact and instead had a virtually free passage to touch down. A quick chat with Luke Marshall confirmed the plan, so when Doak hit Marshall with the pass the big man split the Connacht axis of Conor Fitzgerald and Tom Daly sufficiently to get a hand free, up and over, and put Marshall over. And every time he does it you wonder about the wisdom of those policies. It can be a tricky place to restart your attack, with a handful of forwards still on the deck. They put it to the corner, won the lineout and saw the maul collapse. You don’t want rugby to be a stream of continuity for one side or the other but it’s nice every so often for a build up to actually lead so something positive.

The United Rugby Championship 2022 got off to a bang this week with scintillating rugby action taking place all over the league. ADVERTISEMENT.

The move itself was so slick that Marshall had to look to the referees to confirm it was legal! Dan McFarland’s side were simply sublime in all areas of the game and look to be the real deal this season. The United Rugby Championship 2022 got off to a bang this week with scintillating rugby action taking place all over the league.