Prizes far from only measure of progress for Ulster’s Dan McFarland

Ulster won 14 out of 16 league games last season and made the European Challenge Cup semi-final - but ultimately failed to win a first piece of silverware since 2006.

McFarland’s side, buoyed by an impressive pre-season victory in London against Saracens, kick off their United Rugby Championship campaign against Glasgow at Kingspan Stadium on Friday night.

“I measure it (progress) in the terms of how we’re going about our business and what we’re working on, we see the stats, we see the way that players develop, we see players getting into the national set-up, we see the things around the programme that we’re trying to improve,” said McFarland. “The outcome is the goal but that’s the same for everybody and there’s plenty within that isn’t within our control.

“It doesn’t stop it being a goal but the measurements that we have are broken down so that we can judge ourselves on the controllables as much as possible.

“The bottom line is that we want to win a trophy but that was the same last year, the same the year before that, the same the year before that.

“There are a chunk of teams like that, not every team...for some it’s making the play-offs or whatever and that’s fair enough, that’s where they are in their development cycle.

“We’re in a stage where over the last three years we’ve played nine play-off games and we’ve played in a league where we’ve finished with a 14-2 record and it’s not given us a play-off game.

“We’ve had a lot of play-off games but we want to win a trophy, there are a lot of other good teams who want the same.”

The domestic league has increased to 16 teams, but Ulster will play fewer matches than last season and McFarland believes that will make the URC more competitive that the Pro14.

“The fact that of an 18-game season it is one-third against the Irish provinces, six derbies against the Irish teams who over the last number of years have been at the top of this competition, that makes it difficult.

“Secondly, the South African teams coming in are going to make things more competitive.

“I’d not say that last year was an anomaly, you still had to win your games, but it was different.

“It’ll be more competitive and you only get one shot at the opposition.

“If you don’t win those one-off games, everything else being equal, it’s out of your control whether you can catch those teams.”

McFarland is sweating on the fitness of flanker Sean Reidy and is missing a few key players for the visit of the 2015 Pro14 champions.

“Sean took a bang but was back up and training, we’re hopeful he’ll be able to play,” he said. “Rob Herring and Will Addison have been injured so we’ll have to see how they go in the next couple of weeks...but we’re optimistic they’ll get game-time in a relatively short period of time.

“Outside of that, we’ve got Luke (Marshall) and Jack (McGrath), who are long-term injured.

“‘Hendy’ (Iain Henderson) won’t be back for the first three or four rounds, Kieran Treadwell won’t be available and there are a few others with bumps and bruises.”

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