Richie Murphy was full of praise for his Ulster side despite falling to a seven-point defeat to neighbours at Ravenhill on Friday night.
A first half full of attacking endeavour may have not yielded the scores that their play deserved, but they still held a slender three-point lead at the break.
In the second half however, Leinster’s power game took over up front, and out wide Jimmy O’Brien and Jordan Larmour provided the sparkle that saw Leo Cullen’s men secure a rare bonus-point win in Belfast.
“Incredible fight, incredible commitment, guys playing for each other, playing as a team was really satisfying,” was how Murphy described his team’s performance.
“I thought our work rate was really good but it’s just very hard to play against Leinster at the moment. They’re in a situation where they’ve changed the way they play. They’re not as fluid in the attack any more as they once were.
“But what they are now is very hard to play against.
“Massive pressure on your set-piece, massive pressure in their line speed and massive pressure at the breakdown.
“When you look at those things that makes it very hard to play,” added Murphy.
Racing out of the traps, Ulster took an early lead through a Ben Carson try.
But a lack of accuracy in the final third meant that there was never any clear daylight between the sides.
Ulster’s set-piece came under a lot of pressure with the lineout in particular having an unusual off-colour performance.
“I suppose from our point of view, some of the reasons we didn’t win that game are around our accuracy.
“We caused Leinster a fair few problems getting into good areas but didn’t capitalise on that field position.
“That’s something we can go back and work on and probably on the other side of that, when Leinster got into those field positions, they were a little bit more clinical.
“It comes back to a couple of things that we were trying to do during the week.
“We didn’t quite nail them on the day but a lot of that is around pressure. Out there we are quite a young team, especially in the front row.
“So, they are learning on the job and we’ll be better for that but it’s going to take a little bit of pain sometimes as well.”
The evening was made worse when Ulster lost three players to injury.
Already down the services of Robert Baloucoune and Jacob Stockdale, Murphy could only watch on in despair as Werner Kok, Ben Moxham and John Cooney all ended up in the treatment room before the night’s end.
“Werner’s gumshield went off and he didn’t pass his HIA.
“Moxy comes on and unfortunately, it looks like he’s done his opposite knee to the one he did the last time.
“We don’t know how severe it is but it doesn’t look amazing at the moment.
“John to go onto the wing, he’s played there before, but for him to come off, it ended up being Nick Timoney out there. He’s played there before as well.
“Disappointing obviously and the problem now is we’ve got a shortage around our back three.
“We’re going to have to come up with a solution and see what that looks like next week.”
It all leaves Ulster desperately short of back-three options ahead of next week’s Champions Cup opener in Toulouse.
It marks what is sure to be a daunting few weeks for Murphy’s men as following a visit to the European champions, Ulster then must face off against Bordeaux who are currently second in the Top 14.
