Munster 18-13 Ulster: Visitors deserved to lose at Thomond Park - Dan McFarland

Ulster head coach Dan McFarland says his side can have no excuses after deservedly losing to 14-man Munster.

Simon Zebo's 15th minute red card gave Ulster, who were already 7-0 up, a major advantage in the contest but one that they failed to capitalise on.

Instead Munster ground out an important United Rugby Championship victory thanks to a late Alex Kendellen try.

It was Ulster's first game in three weeks after a Covid-enforced break.

The province saw matches against Connacht and Leinster called off due to the number of positive cases within their camp, but recovered sufficiently to fulfil Saturday's fixture in Limerick.

"We've got no excuses there," said McFarland.

"Lots of teams have had the same kind of situation and I thought we had a pretty good week's preparation, we had some pretty good players out on the park tonight."

• Ulster beaten by 14-man Munster

Despite enjoying a numerical advantage for the majority of the contest Ulster failed to made it count, adding only two Nathan Doak penalties to their score after Zebo's dismissal.

The driving rain at Thomond Park contributed to what was a largely attritional contest in which Ulster failed to consistently pick holes in Munster's defence.

"We deservedly lost," McFarland admitted.

"When Munster got their red card you just got that gut feeling that they're suddenly going to fire up and play backs against the wall stuff and that's exactly how it turned out.

Munster now sit two points behind Ulster in the URC table with a game in hand

"I thought they were really good, they played really well. I thought they had lots of energy and in some areas of the game we didn't match that.

"It was very difficult conditions out there but we did get a handle on the game in the second half for a period where we were controlling territory quite nicely.

"We have a couple of decisions in there and a couple of poor executions in terms of playing tat territory game and ended up conceding field position.

"On the other side of the coin we had our opportunities to score in the first half in their 22 and we didn't take them."