Ulster: Province 'gutted' after unbeaten start abruptly ended in Connacht hammering
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Watch: Connacht too strong as Ulster suffer first defeat of season
Dan McFarland says his players are "gutted" after suffering a heavy defeat at the hands of Connacht in Dublin.
The loss ended Ulster's undefeated start to the season as they shipped five tries against their inter-provincial rivals.
"It's a pretty gutted dressing room," he said.
"To come away with a result like that is very disappointed but we've just got to refocus and pick ourselves up."
Having won their first four games Ulster arrived at the Aviva Stadium as the only team in the United Rugby Championship with a perfect record but were blown away by Connacht.
The western province enjoyed total domination at the breakdown and the lion's share of territory, particularly in the second half when Ulster offered nothing in attack aside from Bradley Roberts' consolation score.
"In general we couldn't get the go-forward in our attack that we wanted and they did really well in the breakdown situation," said McFarland.
"That made our attack blunt and as a consequence we ended up defending a lot, as a consequence the two intercepts came off the back of us forcing things and good play by them.
"Coming out in the third quarter it was important that we got an opportunity to put these things right and we didn't get out, I think they had 74% territory in the second half.
"Every time we had an opportunity to go into their half we either made an error at the scrum or turned the ball over at the breakdown and allowed them right back into our territory."
It is now a month until Ulster's next game, with the province sitting on 20 points from their first five matches of the season.
Their four wins all came against sides they were expected to defeat, and while they deserved each victory they have been guilty of wastefulness in possession throughout the opening chunk of the campaign.
"You could argue that in chunks of those games we showed the kind of ability to turn the ball over when we have it in attack that cost us tonight. Connacht were more ruthless in exploiting that," McFarland continued.
"Is it [four wins from their first five games] a good place to be? To be honest I can't think about that now, I'm just interested in our performance. That wasn't good enough to win a game at all.
"It hurts. Unfortunately we don't have a game next week which is really frustrating."