Ulster leave it late but carve out Connacht draw

Ulster 25-25 Connacht

Ulster scored two late tries to secure a well-deserved draw with Connacht in round two of the Vodafone Women's Interprovincial Championship at the Kingspan Stadium.

It looked like Murray Houston's side were down and out when they trailed 25-11 with less than eight minutes to play but India Daley and Stacey Sloan scored close-range tries, which were both converted by Vicky Irwin to claim a share of the spoils.

Ulster had beaten Connacht in Cork in last season's championship for their first Interpro win since 2012 and came into the game with high hopes.

The hosts had more of the play in the opening half but Connacht were better able to convert their chances and scored impressive first-half tries through Faith Oviawe and Maebh Deely.

Laoise McGonagle and Deely scored two five pointers in the second half, either side of a fine effort from Lucy Thompson.

A Deely penalty pushed Connacht's lead out to 14 points late on but Ulster, who also scored late tries to secure two bonus points last weekend against Munster, were not done and finished much stronger to carve out the draw.

"I think we just built into the game, which is a bit unfortunate but we are really glad to come away with the draw," player of the match Brittany Hogan said afterwards.

"We got a kick up the backside [at half-time].

"We knew that first-half performance wasn't who were so at half-time we said we had to play in the right areas of the field, work more cohesively in defence.

"We started off slow and gave ourselves a hard job to do but we are workhorses, we are a team of girls that don't stop and I'm really proud that we came away with the draw."

It was Ulster who broke the deadlock after a poor opening where both sides made numerous handling