Ulster 31-15 Racing 92: Stuart McCloskey buoyed by Ulster's 'grit' in European win
- Published
McCloskey scored Ulster's second try of the evening in a player-of-the-match display in Belfast
Stuart McCloskey says Ulster showed "grit" to beat Racing 92 and register their first Investec Champions Cup win of the season at Kingspan Stadium.
Ulster snapped a three-game losing streak with a much-needed bonus-point victory over the Top 14 leaders.
For Ulster, it was a huge improvement having conceded 29 unanswered points in last week's loss at Bath.
"It felt like a relief," admitted McCloskey, who was named player of the match.
"Especially with 20 minutes to go when they were putting a lot of pressure on us.
"I think we've let games like that slip away before but we showed real grit and determination to fight on and get the bonus point."
Knowing that a fourth successive loss in all competitions would dent their hopes of progressing to the knockout rounds, Ulster tore into Racing early on with Nick Timoney crossing after just four minutes before McCloskey's try on 22 put the Irish province 14-0 ahead.
Matty Rea and Timoney's second secured the bonus-point for Ulster, and while Racing looked dangerous on the break and scored three tries through the impressive Nolann Le Garrec and Janick Tarrit (2), it was a deserved win for the hosts.
"I suppose it was a European game at home, our backs were against the wall," added McCloskey when asked what was different about Ulster on Saturday compared to recent weeks.
"It's hard to know. We put things in place, especially last week against Bath, we thought we created a lot of opportunities but there were too many handling errors and we obviously struggled a bit with the set-piece.
"We sorted most of that out tonight. There were barely any handling errors and we put them under lots of pressure and it paid dividends."
In addition to securing a bonus-point win, Ulster denied Racing one of their own to leave the Irish province three points ahead of Saturday's opponents heading into the final two rounds of pool fixtures in January.
McCloskey believes ensuring that Racing left Belfast empty-handed could prove important in the long run.
"I suppose it will be," said the Ireland centre.
"In terms of them being dangerous, we knew they would be. We spoke about it during the week that they had scored the most tries in the Top 14 off turnover ball.
"Any time the ball went loose it was going to be all hands on deck, but I think they scored one off a bounce ball and a crossfield, classy try and you're going to get some of those against a team like that."