Dan McFarland seeks improvements as Ulster look ahead to Dragons in PRO14

With Ulster hunting down one of two play-off places in Conference B of the Guinness PRO14, head coach Dan McFarland knows how important this weekend’s trip to Newport will be.
By Richard Mulligan
Published 24th Feb 2019, 15:52 BST
Updated 24th Feb 2019, 17:10 BST
Darren Cave during the Guinness PRO14 league clash between Ulster Rugby and Zebre when he made his 222nd capDarren Cave during the Guinness PRO14 league clash between Ulster Rugby and Zebre when he made his 222nd cap
Darren Cave during the Guinness PRO14 league clash between Ulster Rugby and Zebre when he made his 222nd cap

Ulster ran in eight tries as they thumped Zebre 54-7 and the full five match points saw them climb to third place.

Benetton scored nine tries as they demolished Dragons 57-7 in Italy to stay in second place, two points ahead of Ulster.

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Now Ulster will almost certainly need to win at Dragons on Sunday if they are to maintain their hopes of finishing second or third.

“We’re under no illusion of the challenge of going there and the result they had (in this round) is uncharacteristic of them,” said McFarland.

“It’s a really important game for us in the context of the league at the moment with ourselves Edinburgh, Treviso and Scarlets in the thick of it for two play-off spots, it’s so very important to pick up wins where we can.

“We’re going to Dragons to try and win the game and that’s all we’ll be focusing on.

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“You know that when you go to Rodney Parade you have to front up and be strong and work hard if you don’t do those things, you lose.”

Reflecting on the bonus -point win at home, McFarland added: “We need points, it’s tight, it was important that we got as many points as we could and we played well enough to get the try bonus,” said McFarland.

“I think we got on top of them in the set-piece, they are a good set-piece side but I thought we totally dominated in that area, it allowed us to get a platform in the game and get on and score tries.”

“Some of our execution, we didn’t execute stuff which if we had we would have gone on to score more points.

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“The result was brilliant and we should be very happy with that, Rob Lyttle did very well, Rob Baloucoune did very well and James Hume lovely hands (for Baloucoune’s try) and I thought the two senior centres did very well too.”

“Darren Cave showed great pace down the far side for his 222nd cap so there were a lot of guys who played very well.

“I’m unhappy on the basis as I’m always looking at the performance as a whole and not just the result but we’ve always got to look at stuff to improve.”

Related topics:Ulster