With greater half-back depth and tunnel vision towards the URC, Ulster can have breakout season

ULSTER’S MISSION FOR this season is relatively simple on paper: put together the kind of campaign they did for about three quarters of 2025/26 and ensure the arse doesn’t fall out of it at the end.

Easier said than done, of course; the road ahead won’t be made of paper, and a still relatively thin squad can’t afford to lose too many bodies to bumps and bruises along the way.

Last season, Richie Murphy stated bluntly that his side would prioritise the URC over a Challenge Cup run. And while it would be unjust to the efforts of Murphy and his players to describe their reaching the final of Europe’s secondary competition as an accident, the extent of their progress was such that Murphy was compelled to deviate from his plan.

To call a spade a spade, Ulster wound up prioritising their Challenge Cup final against Montpellier over their must-win URC final-round clash with league-leading Glasgow, for which Murphy made 10 changes to his side which had shared the spoils with second-placed Stormers a week earlier.

The second-year head coach was caught between a rock and a hard place, his quandary — whether to go full-pelt after the province’s first piece of silverware in 20 years or consolidate qualification for the URC play-offs — wasn’t so much a matter of right and wrong but one of personal preference.

Easily said in hindsight is that Murphy backed the wrong horse, with Ulster finishing ninth before being taught a harsh lesson in piping-hot Bilbao the following week, which left them condemned to the Challenge Cup once more.

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The Ulster boss may have sensed, however, that his side was running out of steam in any case and that they didn’t have much of a play-off run left in them, in which case it felt prudent to push all of his chips into the middle of the table.

The long and short of it is that, by the end of March, Ulster were in third spot in the URC table with four games remaining, and they were the highest-ranked Irish province. They lost three of those games and drew once, their injury list mounting as they battled on two fronts, and their season ended in anticlimax.

Ulster’s pool-stage fixture list in the Challenge Cup this season reads Zebre (A), Bayonne (H), Perpignan (A) and Dragons (H); even if they trip, they’ll land in the knockout stages. But it would be folly to put much stock in righting the wrong of Montpellier last season: there’ll likely be another Montpellier in the final, and they’re probably going to be significantly better than Ulster who, it should be stressed, had a record of four wins, one draw and six losses against the URC’s top eight last term.

The bridging of the gap between them and the top sides in the URC and Europe will be achieved only in the league and, by extension, with yearly exposure to Champions Cup rugby. Their priority must not shift from their ‘domestic’ campaign this time around.

With their summer recruitment, meanwhile, the northern province have certainly added depth pieces to counteract the increased international involvement of several key homegrown players.

Cast the mind back to Glasgow in URC Round 18 last season, and Murphy felt it incumbent to have his typical half-back starters begin from the bench; Nathan Doak and Jack Murphy shouldered a hell of a lot of weight in ’25/26 but their efforts will be reinforced this term by significantly higher-quality competitors.

Matthew Devine arrives from Connacht as still one of the most exciting scrum-half talents in the country, and the prospect of him reuniting with his former attack coach in Galway, Mark Sexton, is noteworthy. Devine, ostensibly an agent of chaos on the field, should complement greatly the more composed presence that is Doak, and he’ll surely push the incumbent nine for starting minutes as the season progresses.

Equally, Jamie Benson, an Irish-qualified recruit from Harlequins who turns 24 this Wednesday, is sufficiently talented that he should compete with Jack Murphy for the 10 shirt, and not merely occupy it when Murphy needs a rest (or, should he continue to develop on his current trajectory, is away with Ireland).

Another key signing is six-foot-seven second row Eli Snyman, who joins from Benetton as a proven URC campaigner over the past three seasons. The Zimbabwean will at least partly account for the loss of Ulster captain Iain Henderson across the opening months of the season and, given Henderson’s injury profile in recent years, Snyman may well prove an adept signing such is his comparable experience among a youthful Ulster pack and second-row unit.

Eduardo Bello, a 26-cap Puma who arrives from Newcastle, will theoretically add some heft to Ulster’s tighthead stocks, too, albeit his NIQ signing is something of a gamble: the 30-year-old hasn’t played a competitive game since suffering an ACL injury against Australia just over two years ago. Should Bello remain fit, he’ll hopefully counter-balance some of the power lost on the other side of the scrum with the departure of short-term signing Angus Bell.

Easily forgotten, too, is the proverbial new signing that will be powerful back row James McNabney, who was surely in Andy Farrell’s sights in 2025 before he suffered an ACL injury that ruled him out of all of last season.

Ulster’s squad feels, on the whole, marginally enhanced and, touch wood, deep enough to compete on one front at least.

Richie Murphy’s side were just four games away from not only reaching the URC play-offs last time around, but earning a home quarter-final. At their best last season, they proved themselves a good enough side that a home quarter-final should be the aim in 2026/27, but a return to play-offs and Champions Cup rugby will be the baseline expectation.