ON A BITTERLY disappointing night for Connacht, Pete Wilkins highlighted his team’s slow start and lack of accuracy as key factors in their 17-7 defeat to Ulster on Saturday.

A young Ulster side ended their five-game losing streak by going to Galway and recording their first away win of the season, sucking any festive joy out of an utterly deflated home crowd.

Connacht went into the game with a strong side on paper but were limited to just seven points, which came from Mack Hansen’s converted try in the 35th minute.

The home team fell 10-0 behind after a sluggish start and while they spent much of the contest playing in the right areas of the pitch, a lack of accuracy in the Ulster half proved costly.

“Certainly performance wise we were well behind Ulster, and the scoreline reflects that,” said the Connacht head coach.

“I thought they dominated the physical exchanges, particularly when they got into our attack in 22, they’ve shown great relentless pressure there during the season in terms of the work they’ve done in the attacking 22.

“It’s something we trained for and we’re really aware of, but to be honest, we physically didn’t win enough collisions in there to make them go deep enough into the phases.

I think the scores came too easily for them. That gave them belief, that gave them momentum.

“For us, we played with a lot of width early on and didn’t really make any headway.

“I think when we started playing a little more direct, a little simpler, we started to create some opportunities, but then we didn’t have either the accuracy or the composure to finish them off, so we were well beaten and it’s a massive blow for our season.”

While the result bumped Ulster up to eighth in the URC table, Connacht are now languishing in 13th having lost six of their nine league fixtures. Ospreys are just three points off the province with a game in hand, away to Cardiff on New Year’s Day.

“It certainly puts the pressure on, in terms of the implications for where we finish in the season,” Wilkins said.

“There’s still half of the games to come and a lot of rugby to be played. We’ve dug ourselves out of holes before.

“The way the URC shaped up last year and seems to be this year, you know, if we got a good win tonight, we could have been sixth. With the result we did get and if Ospreys get a win, we could be in the bottom three, so it swings really quickly and either way where we’re at is not good enough, it’s disappointing.

“It’s especially disappointing because I thought the performance we put in against Leinster (last week), the players themselves spoke in the changing room after that about how they’d raised the bar and how frustrated they were to have taken nothing out of it competition points-wise, but the standards we set in terms of the aspects of that play was something we needed to pick up where we left off and take out that frustration on Ulster, and we didn’t see that either in terms of the intensity in that first quarter, nor the standards that we set in that Leinster game and the quality of rugby.

“We created some really good moments, particularly in that second half, but we’re either forcing a pass too many or just not aligned in terms of what we’re trying to achieve in that top third of the field and as a result of that, we coughed the ball up and we weren’t able to turn it into points.”