THE LAST TIME Dan McFarland and Ulster were in Dublin, there was no happy ending. Connacht stuffed them. Questions were asked.
Tonight they answered them. So often in the recent past they have sunk under pressure when Leinster came at them. This time they resisted the charge. How things have changed since their last trip south of the border just five weeks ago.
“There are a couple of things to explain about that,” said their head coach, Dan McFarland afterwards. “One is that lots of teams lose games, we lost a game against Connacht and people were surprised because at the time Connacht were not playing great up until that point whereas we had won all our games. I thought they were magnificent that day.
“In contrast, physically we did not play to the level we needed and four weeks is a long time to be sitting and thinking that you did not earn the respect you needed.
“That added a spark to the fire. It was a catalyst for our motivation coming into this game. It was probably only one spark among many. Playing Leinster in Dublin is the ultimate test in our league; it is as simple as that. If you can’t set your fire for that then what can you set your fire for?
“I thought the players did a magnificent job.”
All the more so because Ulster were missing coaches this week because of Covid protocols.
“We did have a couple of coaches missing for the week but one of the points I made during the week is that it is a testament to them as coaches and to the players in general that the work they do and put onto the field at the beginning of the week was seamlessly brought through at the end of the week,” said McFarland.
“One of the big things you often hear is the players have to grasp what they are doing and take control. It is a fancy word that management use – it is called empowerment – and I don’t really like the word.
“I just think it is taking responsibility for what you have got to do.
“Every club works on that and the work the coaches did this week was magnificent in their preparation as it always is. It was interesting that the group pulls together when there are little, tough things that happen like that.
“They don’t become major things. We plough on. We get on with that. When setbacks happen, it makes it more fun to see how people react to that.”
That was clear tonight. Leinster hit back to make it 10-10 and then James Hume came up with the winning try.
“We had been in this situation a number of times where we have played a good first half and we have been up at half-time and then that third quarter, wow, it is always tough here,” says McFarland.
“We had a couple of things we needed to sort out at half-time and to be fair we did. We talked about sorting out things around our defensive stuff, not dipping into rucks. We made errors at the start of that second half and it was only through a couple of jackals that we got ourselves out of trouble. In times gone by, the games have drifted away from us in that third quarter but in this game it didn’t. We were gritty, we were tough and we fought back.
“We found the mental resilience when they scored that try. To pull it back from 10-10 to get ahead was really pleasing.”
