After an opening day draw against the Scarlets, Ulster secured their first win of the season with a convincing bonus-try victory over Zebre at the Kingspan Stadium.

Nick Williams, Craig Gilroy, Robbie Diack, Andrew Trimble and Dan Tuohy all found the try line for the home side, with Zebre rarely threatening despite a Samuela Vunisa try early in the first half.

Ulster started strongly winning the first penalty of the evening at the scrum on two minutes, and shortly afterwards Darren Cave broke through the Zebre defence before offloading to Rory Best who knocked on with the try line beckoning.

But on four minutes they had the first try of the evening when Ulster won a scrum against the head and Williams
stormed through several would-be tacklers to touch down. Ian Humphreys added the extras and Ulster led 7-0.

But they only held the lead for four minutes, Vunisa striking back almost immediately for the visitors with Kelly Haimona knocking over the conversion.

Ulster suffered aglow when Cave had to depart on ten minutes holding his shoulder to be replaced by Louis Ludik, and a Haimona penalty gave Zebre a 10-7 advantage.

Humphreys had the chance to respond immediately but pushed his penalty wide, not that it mattered as after much deliberation referee Leighton Hodges awarded a try to Gilroy.

Trimble climbed highest to win an up-and-under with the ball shipped wide to Gilroy who dived over in the corner, Humphreys adding a testing conversion to make it 14-10.

After a blistering first quarter the game slowed, but Ulster still added to their lead 13 minutes from the break when an overlap sent blindside flanker Diack over the try line.

Humphreys was wayward off the tee with the extras but Ulster continued to dominate, Ludik diving over the line only for the try to be ruled out for a forward pass in the build-up.

Ulster continued to play the better rugby after the break, and always looked dangerous despite Ricky Andrew’s sin-binning for a dangerous tackle.

And they extended their advantage with 14 men on the field, Trimble finishing well in the corner after a great break down the blindside from Paul Marshall.

That secured the bonus point, and Ian Humphreys added the extras to extend the home side’s lead to 26-10 and set up what looked like a comfortable victory.

A clever kick through from Humphreys then set Dan Tuohy away for his second try of the season with 14 minutes remaining, Humphreys’ conversion sealing the result once and for all.

With nine minutes on the clock Haimona knocked over a penalty but it was little consolation to the visitors who were comfortably outplayed.

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