ULSTER HEAD COACH Dan McFarland claims the province have brought in Limerick hurlers strength and conditioning coach Mikey Kiely to fill the same role at Kingspan Stadium in order add some “disruption” to their set-up — but in a good way.
Kiely, who is very highly regarded after Limerick’s recent All-Ireland success was underpinned by their visibly superior fitness levels to Cork in the final, has already linked up with the province in pre-season and will continue his role in Belfast on a full-time basis moving forward.
His arrival at Kingspan Stadium represents a significant coup for Ulster, who were looking to replace the outgoing David Drake after he took up the S&C job at Worcester Warriors in the Gallagher Premiership, with McFarland revealing pre-season has been ramped up a few notches this season compared to previous years.
And while some might be a tad sceptical at Kiely’s lack of experience in rugby specifically, the head coach — who is beginning his fourth season in charge of Ulster — believes bringing in a fresh set of eyes and ideas will help keep the province moving forward in their bid to win silverware.
“Mikey will bring a different dimension, a different perspective, and we’re always looking for that, guys that can disrupt the common thinking, change things up, give us a different idea. He’s been with us for a number of weeks, he popped back down to win an All-Ireland and has now popped back up again. It’s great to have him on board,” said McFarland.
“I use the word disruption because that’s exactly what it is. Disrupt structures to create growth. We don’t want to end up in an area of group-think where everyone is patting each other on the back. We don’t want to do pretty well, we want to get better all the time. That would be the same even if we were winning trophies. You always want to get better.
“The teams that are repeat winners, that’s what they’re doing. They’re always finding another angle, another edge. We pride ourselves on that. We’re going to try something new, we’re not afraid of failing and we’re all in. If there are any reasonable, logical ways of moving forward then we’ll go for it. If that’s bringing in people from other sports then great.
“As coaches, athletic performance coaches, we’re always looking outside, whether it’s different sports, different areas of high performance, just finding out what different people are doing and seeing if we can get ideas.”
Since taking over at Ulster, McFarland has been a strong believer in the mental side of the game being just as important as the physical side, with his mantra of ‘fight for every inch’ so deeply ingrained in the team’s approach that it now takes pride of place on the collar of this season’s jerseys.
Accordingly, the province have also advertised for a performance psychologist this season and the former Connacht prop hopes that will also contribute to the team cutting the gap between themselves and Leinster at the top of the United Rugby Championship.
“We’re really happy with that process. You’re well aware of my background on this and my opinion on this has been strong for some time that the mental skill side of the game hasn’t been addressed properly by rugby clubs, certainly in this hemisphere,” said McFarland.
“We employ a lot of people that work on the physical side of the game, real experts in those areas. We have four or five athletic performance staff and more if you include the Academy, and we’ve four or five medical performance staff, we’ve nutritional performance staff members, and yet in an area where whenever you read about top performers and they’re asked about the difference, how many times are you told it’s all in the top two inches? That I was mentally stronger, that I wasn’t more talented. That it was upstairs that made the difference. How many times do you read that?
“And, yet, the mental side of the game is left to the coaches, who have a grasp on the mental side through playing before but they don’t have the scientific knowledge, they don’t have the research knowledge, or at least not to the level where it can become a programme.
“I understand the science and the psychology of sport to a degree but my role is to put in place a programme that supports the athletes who are going to play at the weekend. So I think an elite performance analyst can help us in any number of areas.”
Meanwhile, McFarland also confirmed they haven’t closed the door completely on adding another face to their squad for the coming season but did acknowledge they won’t be bringing anybody in for the sake of it and that any prospective arrivals must be the right fit.
The province look rather light in the back row after a deal for former European Player of the Year Leone Nakarawa fell through over the summer, with Ulster heading into the new campaign having not replaced Marcell Coetzee, who departed for the Bulls midway through last season.
“It was really disappointing that the Leone deal didn’t come through. It was a tough decision but it was based on the right reasons,” revealed McFarland.
“Looking forward, we haven’t written off bringing someone in but the key thing is that we want to bring in the right person. If we’re going to bring someone in then we want to bring in the right person. If we’re bringing someone in then we want to bring in someone who is really going to make a difference to our back-row.
“We’ve a lot of good back-row players so it’s not a case of bringing in another back-row number, it’s a case of bringing in someone who can make a significant difference and if we don’t find that then we won’t bring someone in. We’ll stay as we are.
“There are occasions when you need to because of injury crises or whatever but we’re not at that stage so the recruitment in the back-row is that, is that if there’s someone in the back-row who can make a difference then we’ll give it a go, if there isn’t then we’ll keep our powder dry.”
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