URC win over Connacht 'massive for us' - Murphy

Kieran Treadwell and Werner Kok celebrate after the match in Belfast

Ulster head coach Richie Murphy says his side's hard-earned 32-27 win over Connacht at Kingspan Stadium on Saturday was "massive for us".

Ulster scored five tries to Connacht's four in an action-packed Irish interprovincial derby to end a two-game losing run.

"Five points at home was exactly what we needed to get back into the competition, which was made very difficult by a really good Connacht team," Murphy told BBC Sport NI.

"Some of their attack stuff has been excellent this year so far and they didn’t disappoint tonight again."

Murphy was particularly pleased with the way his team went about their task.

"Our toughness and fight and commitment was really good.

"There are things we need to be way better at - like overplaying in our area and not looking after the ball well enough at those times which caused us a lot of trouble – in fairness to Connacht they capitalised on that - but we're delighted with the win."

The northern province used the rolling maul to good effect against their western counterparts.

"To get a couple of maul tries is big for us, something that Ulster would have been built on back in the day, but we haven’t been able to capitalise on those in the past while.

"It was really nice to see the lads get over the line there. The last couple of weeks once we’ve got in and around that goal-line we haven’t been finishing off some of those tries but I thought we did really well today."