Eric O’Sullivan looks to the positives despite Ulster’s home loss to Edinburgh in United Rugby Championship opener

Trailing 34-5, Ulster scored 24 unanswered points to take two points from the game.

One of the positives for the province was their scrum winning 100% of the ball on their own feed and prop Eric O’Sullivan has hailed the influence of new forwards coach Clarke Dermondy, who arrived at Ravenhill in the summer from New Zealand Super Rugby franchise the Highlanders.

“I think Clarke’s just brought real clarity about what we want there, put a big emphasis on our back five, making sure that we're really engaged going into every scrum,” said O’Sullivan.

“It's just more of an attitude now...I think that we want to be a feisty, sticky pack in there, being aggressive in there and try to go after the team.

“I think set-piece wise against Edinburgh with the scrum particularly, we were probably happy enough there, it felt like we were dominant there, showing good pictures to the ref, so yeah, probably happy with that.

“Line out at times I think we can be cleaner there as well, but I think scrum we were probably alright there.”

O’Sullivan is hoping the front row reinforcements brought in over the summer, Argentine Eduardo Bello and Keynan Knox, a try scorer on his debut, can help Ulster’s scrum which was the third worst in the domestic league last season.

He added: “Eduardo been great, himself and Keynan coming in, they’ve done a great job there. I think both big men are big lumps of meat, they're good tight heads and yeah, you learn a lot going up against guys like that because if you don't get it right you're going to be under pressure.

“So, it definitely raises the game in terms of what you need to do in training, which then obviously helps you going into games, so you're well prepped for what you're going to face.”

Despite the unexpected defeat on opening night – O’Sullivan felt aspects of Ulster’s game were good.

“Difficult game for us,” he continued. “I think obviously in the first half we just didn't really get out of the blocks, gave ourselves a lot to overcome there, against a quality opposition like that, you can't afford to go behind like that and expect to turn the game around in the second half.

“I thought towards the end...there were obviously a lot of bright sparks there. I think we looked fit towards the end of the game.

“We looked like we could close it out but obviously didn't get across the line, so yeah, disappointing but obviously some growth there.

“There was a lot of times where it felt like we were doing a lot of good stuff out there and then that advance of the ball or I don't know, you'd make a line break and then you're chasing out there trying to get control back, I think that's something that we'll learn just from playing more games.

“You definitely just learn how to stick in the fight a bit more...I know that we'll learn from that.

“I think in general there's a lot of easy fixes there for us going forward, so we'll get in, we'll review hard and look forward to next week.”

Ulster travel to Glasgow on Saturday looking to bounce back.

O’Sullivan commented: “Tough place to go, so we're going to have to learn and be ready to go into the week, come in with a lot of energy and buzz into Glasgow.”