RUGBY:ULSTER COACH Brian McLaughlin tried to marshal his feelings following successive provincial defeats to Leinster and Munster while weighing it against the strides some of his young players, in particular, have made in two difficult assignments.

Deep in the bowels of Thomond Park he was at least able to console himself with the assertion that a young, largely native team had produced a decent display in a difficult environment, despite the margin of defeat, and one that was light years removed from the torpor of their defeat on Monday against Leinster at Ravenhill.

“Yeah, we are obviously disappointed with the final score,” he said. “We felt we deserved a little bit more than that, felt our performance warranted a little bit more than that, from our point of view. Compared to Monday it was chalk and cheese, but we ended up on the wrong side of a scoreline we are devastated with, unfortunately.

“You look at the players out there tonight and you look at Luke Marshall and the future he has in the game. Yes, our last two games have been exceptionally disappointing, but we took a decision before Christmas that we were going to try to use our squad over these two games to make sure we are fit and healthy as we move towards Europe.

“It backfired a little results-wise, but hopefully we will be able to get the benefit over the next month.”

McLaughlin said they had taken a broader view regarding personnel for the games against Leinster and Munster.

“We planned that certain boys would play two games. (Robbie) Diack was out injured for a while so gave him two games. (Nevin) Spence wouldn’t play because of a situation with Darren Cave; we had to rest him (Spence) and make sure he is sweet for those two Heineken Cup games.

“If you want me to be honest, I would say we had two teams in mind, we let the players know the week before Christmas. We have got to develop our squad, we have got to keep the squad ticking over and give guys opportunities, and we felt this was the ideal time to do it. Some can say it has backfired.

“Maybe it has, but from my point of view the benefit we got out of tonight and the young players performing in that cauldron and that atmosphere, (well) they are going to learn massively from it. They’ll learn that when you have the football you have got to do the right things with it. We just didn’t get control of the ball at all.

“When we missed the opportunity to go 17-3 up we turned the ball over, we kicked when we should have run, run when we should have kicked, tried to play a wee bit too much rugby.

“I am pleased with our performance, the pride and passion was there for all to see. We have to get a little bit more execution into our game. We may have gone back a couple of bus stops, but going back those couple of stops will do us a world of good, if we learn from it.”

McLaughlin is convinced the young, home-nurtured talent can propel Ulster to where they want to go on the pitch. “Look at last month and the performance of Nevin Spence, the performance tonight of Luke Marshall, Paddy Jackson on the bench tonight.

“We are very confident about our future and we are very confident about the youth we have coming through. We feel we have a nice blend of youth and experience and we feel the signings we made in the summer have helped us dramatically.

“We also realise we are not the polished article yet and that will make us all the stronger.”