DESPITE RESCUING A draw from their game against Benetton at Kingspan Stadium last night, Ulster head coach Dan McFarland admitted it felt like his side had been beaten.

A penalty try with the last play of the game, when the Italians illegally sacked a maul that was rumbling over the line at pace, saw the hosts salvage a 17-17 draw after being seconds away from losing it.

However, it’s not the return that Ulster will have wanted from the game after the high of reaching the knockouts of the Heineken Champions Cup last weekend and the strength of the team they were able to field.

Far from looking like the polished side that dispatched Racing 92 only two weeks previously, Ulster struggled to find gaps in the Benetton defence and for long periods were dominated by their visitors.

As a result, the side remain fifth in Conference B, two points behind their opponents and tied with Scarlets.

“You don’t want to know,” he said with a rueful grin when asked what he said to the squad after the game.

“That’s definitely a draw which felt like a loss. We should have won that game. We didn’t play well enough, for a lot of the time we weren’t up to it.

“Physically I thought they were very strong and we always knew that was going to be the case and we struggled to deal with it defensively and in attack.

“It feels like a loss. We should have been better.”

Even though overall it was a disappointing night for the Irish province, it was an incredible start for the hosts when they scored the opening try of the game after just 47 seconds.

A turnover from the kick-off saw Michael Lowry set Stuart McCloskey through, and he in turn put Louis Ludik over, but McFarland surprisingly revealed that the early try was a blessing in disguise.

“A try after 50 seconds was a nightmare,” claimed the Englishman. “You think you’ve done the job and you’ve still got 79 minutes and 10 seconds to play.

“We started well but we didn’t keep up that kind of pace in our movement and energy in our attack.

“They had a really good defence, don’t get me wrong. They were physical and they filled the line and it was very difficult to break them down, and lots of teams have found that difficult this year.

“We did it early on but as we went on we knew we weren’t going to be able to bash them, we weren’t going to be able to bash the door we had to move the ball and in order to do that you have to get into position quickly.

“There has to be lots of energy in your attack and I didn’t see that energy.”

And the head coach did concede that there was perhaps a hangover from that win over the Leicester Tigers last weekend, however he argued that it wasn’t down to complacency or taking their eye off the ball.

He conceded: “Possibly. There was a six-day turnaround and we came into that game with a lot of fresh faces and we showed a little bit of naivety in the game as well in some of the play.

“I’ll have to look at what we did in the weeks that led to us not playing as well as we can.”