Ulster handed lesson after early promise as Racing power away

Ulster head coach Dan McFarland said his side were taught a lesson as they were thrashed by Racing 92 in Paris.

Tries from Teddy Iribaren, Wenceslas Lauret, Juan Imhoff, Teddy Thomas and Simon Zebo, plus 17 points from Finn Russell’s boot, secured victory.

Ulster scored two tries courtesy of David Shanahan and Jacob Stockdale, with Billy Burns converting one.

“It’s a funny one as I’m really disappointed but we showed a glimmer of what we’re capable of. But we got a lesson in accuracy,” said McFarland.

“Throughout the game we demonstrated we could cause them trouble, but ultimately there were a few things we needed to get right for us to be competitive. One is whenever we created opportunities we needed to be accurate and we didn’t do that.

“Our line-out also wasn’t great and we have to be better in that aspect. We’ve been getting turnovers at the breakdown all season but we couldn’t get many against Racing.

“We were also given a lesson in terms of accuracy and finishing off our opportunities. Racing were excellent and we didn’t turn enough of our opportunities into points.”

Ulster started strongly with a scintillating try from Shanahan which was started by full-back Michael Lowry in his own 22.

Stockdale crossed in the corner soon after to extend their lead further. But that was as good as it got, with Racing hitting back with two first-half tries through Iribaren and Lauret.

The Parisians were dominant in the second half and crossed for a further three tries to secure the bonus point.

Despite slipping to their first European defeat this season, McFarland remains optimistic about Ulster’s prospects. He said: “We have been a little bit up and down but when we get it right we are very good.

“I’m a glass-half-full sort of person, so I’ll be emphasising the positives to the players and we’ll look to improve what we didn’t do right.

“We had some young players out there and some relatively new combinations.”