Stuart McCloskey key to the cohesion as Ulster start brightly

Ulster were the big winners from the opening round of URC action.

Their bonus point win over Connacht was the most dominant performance from the Irish provinces, following Munster's stuttering loss away to Cardiff and Leinster’s unpolished defensive display against Zebre in Parma.

What is becoming increasingly obvious from watching the provinces is how streamlined the attacking systems are, being implemented from the international team down to the four provinces themselves.

While the internationals are still returning to action through pre-season training, Ulster were the team that found the most cohesion. A lot of that was a result of the sheer dominance that Stuart McCloskey and Luke Marshall had in the centre of the field. However, their whole unit seemed to work better than that of Connacht and it certainly looked like a team that is further down the track than Munster too, who are still getting used to their new surroundings.

Munster have changed their attacking system to mimic the Irish attacking system. This isn’t fully evident yet, although there were sparks of some cohesion when Paddy Patterson and Jack Crowley shared the pitch in pre-season and parts of this came out in their game against Cardiff.

A multitude of handling errors and an uncharacteristically poor performance from Malakai Fekitoa in the middle of the pitch changed the look of their attacking shape that has been looked at closely by Paul O’Connell, who has been attending some of the province's training sessions.

Ulster flew out of the blocks in the first five minutes against Connacht. Their set-piece launch-plays and their general fluidity between backs and forwards was impressive. That is much easier when McCloskey is in the form that he’s in, with a