Dan McFarland unworried by Ulster’s away form ahead of crunch Pro14 semi-final against Edinburgh

Ulster have lost their last five league games away from Kingspan Stadium and have only one Pro14 win outside Belfast this season when they defeated the Southern Kings back in October.

However, Ulster have beaten English Premiership sides Bath and Harlequins on the road in Europe this season.

“We’re not worried about winning away from home, you seen us win in Bath, at Harlequins, at Scarlets last year in a critical game, at Leicester,” said McFarland.

“We’ve won in Edinburgh, we’re a team capable of putting out a performance away from home but that doesn’t belie the fact that it’s really difficult to do.

“It’s teams like Leinster that do it consistently and for the rest of us mere mortals it’s a very difficult task but it’s something that we relish, we’re up for it, I don’t care how difficult it is,” he added.

“It’s a difficult task, there’s only ever been two wins in away semi-finals, both by Scarlets, so I know the difficulty of what’s in front of us but we want to give a better shot than we did last year and put out a better performance.”

Ulster travelled to Scotland last season in the semi-final of the Pro14 but lost 50-20 to Glasgow and McFarland feels the memory of that game will drive the squad on this Saturday.

“Last year was disappointing, we were knocked over by the first wave and never got back to our feet, or not until it was too late,” he said.

“I thought Glasgow were excellent in that game, really good. I remember saying at the time that I didn’t know whether us at our best would have won that game at that point.

“I don’t know whether we would have done, the disappointment was that we didn’t play as well as we could have done, that really soured that experience for me. I know there’s a hunger in the squad this year that we want to give it our best shot this time.”

Edinburgh topped Conference B, won 11 of their 15 Pro14 games this season and have lost only one league game at home.

“You could legitimately say that themselves (Edinburgh) and Leinster have been the stand-out teams in our competition this year,” stated McFarland.

“Richard has built a squad there based on quality international players I think they have 20 in their squad.

“You only have to look at the league table as it stands to see what a top quality they are.

“Leinster are the team to beat but Edinburgh aren’t far behind them. Last week, how much we can take from that game, I don’t know,” he added.

“There’s bits around style but we probably knew a lot of that anyway, it does make it interesting.”

McFarland said ideally he would have preferred more time to allow his squad to train together ahead of the weekend’s crunch encounter.

“The thing you would like to have at this stage is a period of time where you had the vast majority of your players on the pitch training together, because that’s the biggest thing that goes. That feeling of cohesion in how you play, we missed a little of that last weekend and certainly the week before.”

Ulster have injury concerns over Jordi Murphy, Jacob Stockdale and Stuart McCloskey.

Murphy suffered concussion against Leinster while Stockdale and McCloskey are being monitored after suffering contusions.