Richie Murphy spoke about the importance of the victory, the atmosphere at Kingspan Stadium and the man of the moment, John Cooney, after his penalty made the all-important difference.
Match Analysis
"In the first half, I thought we played some really good rugby. We couldn’t quite get over the line three or four times, which is something we need to look at, when we have that push on we need to be able to finish them off.
We’ll work on that over the next couple of weeks but I thought in the second half a couple of decisions from the referee to put the ball down, into their half and they started to get into their game.
We were creaking but managed to stay in it. I’m happy because that was a big improvement on previous games. Defensively we stuck at it, we weren’t perfect but Leinster tend to score a lot of points.
A team like Leinster can cut you open in a second, one blocked down and run in then a misconnection at a ruck and one guy slips through but over the last number of weeks we have shown great resilience."
On John Cooney's match-winning penalty
"It was made for John. They are the kicks you dream of but probably don’t really want. John is maybe a little different, he probably does want them. He’s on a massive run of consecutive kicks at the moment, his goal kicking is top class. When he was stepping up, I didn’t fear he wouldn’t get it."
What the win does for team
"We needed to win tonight, the crowd were incredible and got right behind the team. We feel like we are getting better, especially over the last number of weeks. In training compared to where we started, things are coming together. I think that was our most complete performance, but there still mistakes in there too.
We are focused on the week we are in and don’t look too far ahead. Our goal was to get into the play-offs, but it was our performances over these few weeks that would take care of that. We are delighted to be in it, we’ll aim for top seven to secure Champions Cup."
Munster focus
"We’ll go to Munster, players will get time off this week to recover. I think we did pretty well to get through the game injury wise. Hopefully we can build off the back of this onto Munster and the play-offs."
On the home support
"Massive. This is my third home game, each week it has built. The atmosphere was incredible, a special night, especially for the likes of Billy, Will and a number of others. Since I have come in those two have been massive parts of this group."
Match-winner and BKT Player of the Match, John Cooney, expressed his joy on the big win and talked through his thoughts in taking the vital penalty that handed Ulster the victory.
On his mindset for the kick
"It didn’t cross my mind! I watched a video of Tiger Woods before the game and he says to let your body take over in those moments. He can't remember some putts and I can’t remember the kick.
I just remember thinking, It’s eerily quiet and I hope my shot clock doesn’t run down! Other people were probably more confident than me, I didn’t really think about it.
The second last kick, if I missed the touchline one – we aren’t within three points.
It’s always the second- last they don’t notice. As I missed in warm-up, it could have been easy to say ‘I’ve missed this twice, I’ll miss again’ whereas my mentality was I will nail this."
Visualisation
"Conor Meyler, the County Tyrone GAA footballer, had been messaging me recently and we talked about visualisation. You think about it, you get to a game and it can show the danger of visualisation because you think my first kick will be great, score a try and then none of it happens! You can miss a tackle and they score a try.
So it doesn’t always go to plan. If I think too much, I'd get nervous and anxious. I tried to do it like nobody was there."
Big win
“This has been a tough season, so for us to secure that, grind out the last number of games and win like that was huge. We want to get there a lot easier, I think we should be winning every game – that’s been the confidence of the last couple of years, where we lost after the last play against DHL Stormers. Hopefully this can kick us onto play-off rugby where anything can happen."
On the crowd at Kingspan Stadium
"It's been incredible the last four weeks, I can’t get over how great the crowds have been and the buzz, it’s infectious, the crowd here is unbelievable. I just love it."