'It's unbelievably exciting' - Tom Stewart targets 'full control' Ulster mindset
Ulster go into the final round of regular season fixtures across the United Rugby Championship needing five points at Ravenhill against league leaders Glasgow to secure a place in the play-offs plus next season’s Champions Cup.
Ulster sit eighth, a point ahead of Connacht, having had to settle for a draw against the Stormers last weekend after the South Africans were awarded a penalty try seconds from the end.
“We go in Glasgow with the full control that we can still qualify in the top eight which is an exciting opportunity to come into the last game of the season and all be on the line," said Ulster’s Tom Stewart. “It's one that we'll relish and then the week after that we have a final to look forward to, so it's an exciting couple of weeks for Ulster rugby and one I hope the fans can get behind.
“Glasgow have a great attacking game, they play that deep wide shape and, probably similar to ourselves, they try to get the ball to the edges but they also have that great mauling attack that they've had for years and, probably similar to the Stormers, they've got a great scrummaging game.
“I don't know what stage we were at this time last year but I'm pretty sure we couldn't qualify...it wasn't in our hands definitely anyway, we were waiting for maybe two or three other results so it was frustrating that way.
"But to be in the situation we are now...to have the European Cup final, to be potentially qualifying for the quarters of the URC in the league.
“It's unbelievably exciting, it's something that we've really dug into and, hopefully, the fans and everybody watching can see that.
“There's an excitement about the group and there's an excitement about how we play...it's keeping that and playing for the full 80.”
Ulster are likely to be missing Stuart McCloskey and Jacob Stockdale for Glasgow and the European Challenge Cup final, while skipper Iain Henderson faces a potential suspension after his red card against the Stormers.
“At this stage of the season you just have to take every week as it comes,” said Stewart. “There's multiple things happen every week.
"You just have to park it and move on and deal with what you're dealing with for that week.”
Stewart added: “Whatever happens with ‘Hendy’ (Henderson) will be and we'll just have to move on with that as a team and, hopefully, boys grow into the roles around that.”
The games may be coming thick and fast, but Stewart isn’t changing his approach.
“Look, every individual kind of takes it differently,” he said. “They'll definitely focus down a bit more and try and be a bit more professional I would say, with the weekends and recovery and things like that.
"But I don't think we try to change too much week to week with training, stuff that's worked for us throughout the year is what we're trying to go after and I can't see us changing too much of that.
“There's times, like last week, we were a six-day turnaround so it's a bit harder to get, we don't have that extra training session during the week so you have to cram your weekends.
"So you have to manage boys a bit that are a bit dinged up from the weekend, you know you're in on a Monday after a Saturday game or whatever and then, it's hard but it's something that knockout rugby brings, you just have to keep turning up every weekend.”