Jordi Murphy: Ulster flanker eyes Connacht scalp to banish European woes

Jordi Murphy moved from Leinster to Ulster in 2018

Ulster back row Jordi Murphy says the province are determined to "put right" their disappointing recent record away to Connacht in Sunday's Pro14 meeting at the Sportsground.

Ulster have lost on their last four trips to Galway, including a 44-16 hammering in December 2017.

Murphy believes getting off to a solid start will be key to the northern province's chances this time around.

"We haven't had a great run of results there in the last few years," he said.

"We've been looking back in our meetings, I suppose we tend to lose that first 20-minute battle with them.

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"They get their tails up pretty quick and it's always hard to claw your way back when you're away from home when you give the opposition a great platform to start on, so that's one of the areas we need to look at this week, to get a really fast, competitive start.

"As a group, we're relishing another challenge in the Sportsground. Results haven't gone our way in the last few weeks, and we haven't had a lot of luck down there in the last couple of years so we definitely want to put that right this week."

Bouncing back

Ulster head to Galway on the back of a couple bruising European defeats by Toulouse and Gloucester, the latter of which saw Dan McFarland's side squander a 10-point lead to lose 38-34 in a scintillating Champions Cup encounter at Kingsholm.

And while Murphy admits the Gloucester game was one of the more painful defeats he has suffered, the 29-year-old reckons "managing the game" against Connacht will be the perfect way to move on from Ulster's recent European travails.

"We'll always spend day one when we're back in reviewing things that didn't go our way or things that were in our control that we let slip away," said the former Leinster flanker, who is spending Christmas in Belfast with his partner and newborn daughter.

"We definitely did that at the weekend and today we had a good look back at that. They beat us up front in the maul, which is somewhere we take a lot of pride in.

"We definitely came out second best there so and then a couple of bad playing decisions on our part in really key parts of the game, so managing the game is always something we strive to improve on.

"That is definitely something we're going to have to do down there because there always an attritional side to play and you never know what the elements are going to be like down there so it could be one of those games where there's only a score in it."