Dan McFarland vows Ulster will regroup for European clash with Sale

Ulster were on course for back-to-back wins in Dublin leading 22-3 after 36 minutes playing against Leinster’s 14 men following Cian Healy’s sending off.

However, Leinster scored 35 unanswered points before Sam Carter got a try in the last minute to salvage a bonus point for Ulster.

With Ulster slipping to fourth in the URC table and 12 points behind leaders Leinster, attention now turns to the first two rounds of Europe.

Ulster face high-flying Sale away next Sunday afternoon.

“That's hard to take, there's no room for licking our wounds,” McFarland said.

"We'll get back to it on and have a little bit of a review, then have a good preview on Sale and get our heads down and work hard at that.

“We'll go about our business. We're going over to play the second best team in England – an extremely physical team – and they've had a rest week this week.

“We've had a brutal battle here and that makes it extra tough but we'll really look forward to the challenge.

“It's another week, we'll go through the same processes that we always do,” he added.

“Definitely that's going to knock us, we’ll have to get our heads down and review and refocus. There's nothing like a European game away from home to refocus the mind.”

Despite Ulster taking advantage of Healy’s sending off to build up what should have been a commanding 19-point lead, McFarland felt the red card galvanised Leinster.

“It affects Leinster, they took off a winger and left the eight forwards which is probably the smart thing to do – it's probably what I would have done in their situation,” he said.

“But it's funny how difficult it is to play against 14 men.

“Teams, especially Irish teams, seem to grow an extra arm and a leg because it's a challenge. I've seen that a number of times, not just against us, but for us as well.

“Fair play to them, we helped them with the double yellow but there we go.

“I think we obviously took advantage of having a man up. We played some nice stuff in that first-half, some nice transitions, some good power-plays in their '22' got us those three scores,” McFarland added.

“Then we came out in the second-half and we made some errors in the middle of the pitch.

“We obviously had given the try away at the end of the first-half which gave them a little bit of momentum, but then (in the second-half) we gave them field position.

“They were able to capitalise on that because they're a good team, that's the long and the short of it.”

McFarland was left to rue a confidence-boosting try scored by Leinster before the end of the first half.

“We're on the back-foot in that third quarter and we probably fuelled their confidence with the try just before half-time,” he said.

“The field position there was avoidable – the field position we gave them in the second-half was avoidable.”

“Momentum is a funny thing in rugby, especially when you're playing in a place that's as difficult to win as it is here.”