Dan McFarland left in search of answers after Ulster loss to Connacht

Ulster had already qualified for the semi-finals before kicking a ball yesterday in Dublin and the head coach felt that may have been a factor.

“Personally I think that game was won and lost on the sofa last night (Saturday night) watching Glasgow losing,” said McFarland. “I’m searching for a reason why we didn’t have the spark that I was expecting and at the moment that is the only reason.

“It was a little bit disappointing to put out that kind of performance in an interprovincial game.

“I don’t want to take stuff away from Connacht but that was a shadow of our normal selves, it was a very unexpected situation the face we had no pre-season games, it was the first game out but I was still expecting more.

“The bottom line is you watch Leinster turn up in a game Saturday night that had no meaning for them and they were a lot closer to the money than we were today.

“It’s not catastrophic, but we don’t feel we played as well as we should have.

“You’re trying to remind yourself of the levels and standards you set yourself around certain aspects of the game, there’s always going to be areas of the technical and tactical stuff that can go wrong.

“When you talk about the energy and physicality, you want to set standards, there’s probably reasons behind that.

“I’d have hoped we would have found that earlier in the first half. it wasn’t until the second half we started to find a bit of that.”

A bad day at the office was compounded for Ulster by picking up a number of injuries that started with Rob Herring before the game.

“Rob was carrying a bit into that, he was a bit conscious in the warm-up, so we decided to pull him out, more a safety thing for him,” said McFarland. “Adam (McBurney) was extreme cramp. Alan O’Connor had a nasty HIA.”

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