ULSTER CEO JONNY Petrie has underlined the province’s belief that head coach Dan McFarland can lead his team towards trophy success.
The northern province had a deeply disappointing end to their URC season as they crashed out in the quarter-finals at home to Connacht, while the won just once in an underwhelming Champions Cup campaign.
McFarland has been in charge since 2018 and helped to rebuild Ulster from a major low point. The head coach’s current deal runs until the summer of 2025 and Petrie said Ulster believe McFarland is the right man for the job.
“We worked with Dan over the course of the last year to extend out his contract because we were confident in the direction it was going and that continues to be the case,” said Petrie today.
“You look back at the season and Dan would be the first to say this: there are things we could have done better, things we need to improve on, and progress that we need to show.
“But we’re happy with the coaching group and happy with the playing squad that we’re going to have next year and we’re confident we can continue to improve. Hopefully, that will see us over that final hurdle and win some silverware going into next year.”
Towards the end of the 2022/23 season, there was growing chat coming out of Ulster that some players were not enjoying the environment and no longer saw eye-to-eye with McFarland. Those concerns about unhappiness within the squad were only fuelled by the underperformance against Connacht.
Asked if such reports were a cause for concern, Petrie indicated that Ulster could have been better at rotating their squad, particularly during a troublesome run of results in December and January.
“We are obviously aware of some of the mutterings that you get,” said Petrie. “We take the temperature check in that group and understand some of the feedback in there. You’re always going to get groups of players in any squad that are disgruntled.
“I think this year, where perhaps that was maybe exacerbated was when we were under the pump [with the run of poor results], there’s maybe less rotation of the squad than we might have otherwise wanted.
“That was in a big squad with lots of players available and fit as well, maybe that leads to a bit of disgruntlement. You’re always going to get that and it’s tough to manage. It’s important we take the temperature of that in the squad and get feedback around that through our review process.
“It’s something we take on board and move forward into next year. We’re happy with the way that’s going.”
There has also been concern about the ongoing delay in an announcement about Ulster captain Iain Henderson’s future, given that his current deal is due to expire this summer.
Henderson is on an IRFU central contract, so the negotiations have been led by the union’s performance director David Nucifora. The second row attracted an offer from Japan but Petrie indicated that a deal to extend Henderson’s time with Ulster and Ireland is finally nearly done.
“That’s an IRFU-led discussion just now,” said Petrie. “It seems to be moving in the right direction around that. I would expect us to have more to say on that over the next few weeks.
“Obviously, it’s really encouraging to see him being part of that World Cup squad in the first place and that perhaps tells its own story in there. I would certainly like to see that concluded fairly quickly and we’re comfortable where that’s heading just now.”
Petrie confirmed that Dan McFarland’s coaching team will be unchanged next season, with forwards coach Roddy Grant, attack coach Dan Soper, defence coach Jonny Bell, and skills coach Craig Newby continuing in their roles.
CEO Petrie did indicate the collective hope that Ulster can develop their style of play next season, shifting away from a reliance on the maul and forward play and bringing a talented crop of backs back into the picture more.
“Everyone recognises that we might have scored a lot of tries this year and a significant amount of that has been through the improvement of our forward play,” said Petrie.
“You could argue when we’ve got to some of the matches we lost, it’s where we’ve either not played well up front or been figured out by teams. The development of our forward play has been a strength but maybe we’ve moved too far in that direction and lost some of the incisive back play we’ve shown the year before with that same group.
“Trying to find the balance between the two is going to be the trick of it going into this year, not to throw out the strength we’ve developed in that maul and lineout play but we were pretty reliant on that at times this year.
“Part of that was the dip we had during the season and we were really under the pump trying to find a way back to just winning matches. We maybe found something that just worked for us at that point and that got us back on track and ultimately into second place. We need to reflect and find ways to have a more balanced way of playing. That’s something Dan and the coaching group have got hold of.”
Petrie expressed Ulster’s excitement about welcoming Springboks loosehead prop Steven Kitshoff and Exeter back row Dave Ewers into their squad this summer.
Kitshoff’s world-class ability matters the most, but Petrie hopes the South African can be a leader and mentor within the Ulster squad too. Meanwhile, it’s expected that Ewers can will a ball-carrying power that “brings back a little bit of the type of player we had in Marcell Coetzee.”
Petrie wants to see Ulster’s promising young players kick on after some of them had dips in form this season, missing out on Ireland’s wider World Cup squad as a result, while he said the province were pleased to be reducing the size of their senior group.
“There’s been a lot of noise when people look at the headline of 11 players leaving, but there’s a natural trimming of the size of the squad. We had a big squad last year and especially when everyone’s fit and there’s not opportunities to play everyone, that can be quite difficult to manage.
“But we also need to make sure that financially, we’re running a tight ship on squad numbers as well. There was a natural trimming of the squad on that front.”
In summing up last season, Petrie termed it “a bit of a curate’s egg.”
He pointed to positives like finishing second in the URC table and scoring more points than the season before, but he knows it wasn’t of the standard Ulster aspire to. They have regrets about missing out on a possible home URC final.
“We’ve got to be judged on where we ended the season,” said Petrie. “There was a huge amount of disappointment and frustration at going out of the tournament earlier than we should have done.
“The manner we went out in as well because that’s a match we should and could have won. We feel below the standards we set ourselves. Everyone was pretty frustrated.
“But you don’t want to overly react or knee-jerk off the back of that because there’s a lot of good stuff in there as well.”
The goal for next season?
“We want to win trophies,” he said.
“In the first place, you want to be in the space, like Dan always says, of consistently competing to win championships. Get yourself in the mix. But we recognised that over the course of the past few years, we have tended to fall short in the knock-out games.
“Sometimes we’ve just come up against a better side but other times, we could and should have won these things. Sometimes you’ve got to learn how to lose these things before you learn how to win them, but we’ve got to start winning them.
“You see Munster coming through and winning the URC. It’s great to see but makes you wonder what could and should have been for us as well. There’s a degree of frustration that comes out of that. We know we’re capable of it, we know we’ve got the squad and resources to be able to do that.
“It’s just carrying that through. We want to progress and win silverware because we know we’re capable of doing it.”
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