Dan McFarland reflects on ‘toughest’ run of games with Ulster as a head coach

The stint of 10 games were bookended by bonus point home victories in the United Rugby Championship but there was also a mini crisis that saw Dan McFarland’s side lose six of seven games, including three of four in Europe, with derby defeats against Leinster and Munster plus an unexpected reversal at Benetton.

A victory over Sale last week qualified Ulster for the last 16 of the Champions Cup while Friday night’s bonus point win over the Stormers moved the Kingspan Stadium club up to third in the URC just two points behind the South Africans.

There have been plenty of ups and downs for Dan McFarland to contemplate before Ulster travel to the Glasgow Warriors on February 17.

“I reflect on those 10 games as certainly being the toughest that I’ve done as a head coach, not the toughest I’ve done in coaching, but the toughest I’ve done as a head coach,” said McFarland.

“I think at stages we certainly didn’t play as well as we can do and we were faced by opposition and circumstances that needed us to be on top of our game to even think about getting victories in some of those games.

“So, it made it very tough and there was a little bit of momentum, and obviously when things aren’t going right things continue to not go right.

“I think my biggest draw from that is that we never lost faith in what we do, we believe in the way that we play,” he added.

“We believe in what it takes at training and preparation and we never arrived on a Monday morning in ‘flip the table mode’ – it was focused on what are the core things we need to get right and why are they not quite as right as they need to be.

McFarland said he was always confident Ulster would recover from their slump and turn their fortunes around.

“There was never any sense that we weren’t going to get back to playing well,” he said.

“Over the last three weeks we’ve demonstrated that the belief in what we do has always been there.

“If the confidence had maybe dropped off a little bit you keep working hard and you show belief in the people around you and they respond.”

Ulster need a top two finish in the URC to have the right to host a home semi-final and, after having to travel to South Africa at short notice in the last four, McFarland knows the importance of a knockout game in Belfast.

“We’ve got three away games now in a row with the trip to Durban sandwiched in the middle of it, that’s going to be really tough,” he said.

“Six Nations is a time that guys in this club relish and it’s an opportunity for the guys who don’t go to international camp to push on.

“As a coaching team we’re always trying to push on in this period, it’s a real development period for us physically or tactically.

“Some of the tactics we might push on and develop, it’s a great learning opportunity and we’ll definitely make the most of it.”