Ulster Rugby chief executive Jonny Petrie 'confident' Richie Murphy will do a good job

Ulster Rugby chief executive Jonny Petrie says he's confident that incoming interim head coach Richie Murphy will do a "good job."

The Ireland U20s boss is set to take over at Ulster when the Six Nations ends in mid-March.

His first task will be to lead the squad, currently eighth in the table, on a trip to South Africa where they'll face bottom side Sharks and sixth-place Stormers.

"He's in as interim coach through to the end of the season, I really hope he does a good job and I'm confident of him doing that," Petrie told the Belfast Telegraph.

"I'm excited, the club's excited, the players are excited about Richie coming in.

"He has a great track record with the Under-20s of getting the best out of a young group of players and that's certainly something we want to see at Ulster and continue to compete at the top of European competition."

While Murphy indicated to RTÉ Sport last Friday that he would be interested in taking the job full-time, when asked about that, Petrie said: "He's not even started yet in the first place!"

Petrie also revealed details of Dan McFarland's (above) sacking last week after five and a half years at the province, which came off the back of a series of poor results.

"We ultimately got to the point with it where we felt we needed to change the head coach over the course of the past couple weeks," he said.

"I don't have a bad word to say about Dan, I've had a very good working relationship with him over the whole time he's been at the club.

"During that period we've seen a huge amount of progress in where we've got to in being at the top end of the URC and consistently in European competition over that period, albeit it's been frustrating where we haven't taken that final step into silverware.

"Just this