McLaughlin has no regrets at throwing in the kids

ULSTER coach Brian McLaughlin believes his young starlets will benefit from the experience gained in defeat to Munster.

McLaughlin raised eyebrows with his selection decisions for Saturday night’s Magners League derby at Thomond Park, leaving big-name South African signings Johann Muller, Pedrie Wanneburg and Ruan Pienaar out of his travelling squad following last Monday night’s 30-13 thumping at home by Leinster.

Fellow former Springbok BJ Botha was named on the bench but pending paternity forced him back to Belfast, but it was an Ulster starting side showing 13 changes from the Leinster defeat that caught the eye.

With the highly paid Boks left behind, McLaughlin introduced youth, as well as the returning Ireland hooker Rory Best following a fractured cheekbone, and the young blood, provided him with enough vibrancy, creativity and commitment to worry Munster for a long way.

Flanker TJ Anderson, the 23-year-old son of Irish legend Willie Anderson, finished off a super move by the Ulster rookies for the visitors’ only try of the game while stand-in scrum-half Paul Marshall and his non-related centre Luke Marshall were equally impressive.

“You look at the players out there tonight and you look at Luke Marshall and the future he has in the game, look at positives,” McLaughlin said in defence of his selection.

“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, that’s the way we have to look at it, 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 on us, and in relation to the results maybe it has.

“But from my point of view the benefit that we got out of tonight and the young players performing, performing in that cauldron and that atmosphere, 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, ran when we should have kicked, tried to play a wee bit too much rugby.

“I am pleased with our performance, pride and passion was there for all to see, got 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.”