The Dragons trailed 7-6 early in the second period before Adam Black was red carded. Prop Black was dismissed by Welsh referee Nigel Owens for violent conduct on Ulster front-rower Declan Fitzpatrick.
And it proved costly on a sorry night for the Gwent region as the floodgates opened at Ravenhill. “It was a tight period of the match and we had wasted six guilt-edged try scoring opportunities,” said Turner.
“We had three chances in the first 10 minutes and some of our rugby was excellent. But I’m hugely disappointed because we committed rugby suicide.
“You’ve got to get a balance to your game. We needed to tighten our game up more and played far too wide. There was a couple of loose passes and the game was gone. Many people will look at the result and the scoreline and think we’ve been given a beating but that wasn’t the case.
“We left six tries on the table and our finishing wasn’t good enough. We had so many chances and just couldn’t kill them off. We played into the ambush and got rightly punished.”
After Black’s harsh sending off in a scrappy affair in Belfast, Ulster then ran in five unanswered tries for a valuable bonus-point win in Matt Williams’s first match in charge before Dragons replacement Phil Dollman powered over for a late consolation.
Turner added: “I’m trying to be as patient as I can and our effort was outstanding. We were missing some key players like Colin Charvis, Kevin Morgan, Rhys Thomas and Luke Charteris and we didn’t have a bench.
“Ulster were there for the taking and it’s a missed opportunity for us. At one stage, I thought we could win the match and then thought there was a bonus-point there for us. It was a good performance at times.
“Richard Parks was outstanding and although Ulster’s Stephen Ferris was given the man of the match award, he matched him. But our looseness really killed us and we need to learn our lesson.”
