Time for Ulster to refocus says Dan McFarland

Ulster trailed 19-7 but tries from Rob Herring and John Andrew plus two majestic kicks from Ian Madigan put Ulster in the final.

Dan McFarland’s side travel to Dublin to face Leinster on Saturday night for a repeat of the 2013 final when Ulster fell to a 24-18 defeat.

Leinster have won all 16 games in the Pro14 season this year and Ulster coach Dan McFarland knows the size of the task his side faces at the Aviva Stadium.

“It’s going to take another huge effort, we’ll have a look at our game plan and the way we play against them, there’s not many teams that find success against them,” said McFarland.

“We’ll have a particular way that we want to play and we’ll see if we can implement it.

“We took a step forward in the second-half, with less errors and looking more like ourselves but to win in Dublin on Saturday we’ll take a giant step.

“You’re happy to win a semi-final, it’s an achievement but it’s the achievement that you’re after, that’s to win silverware.

“That means that we’ll go home, we’ll recover, we’ll regenerate, we’ll assess what we did well, what we did poorly and then really zone in on what’s relevant to trying to win this weekend.

“It’s the same things we always do, we can’t get ahead of ourselves because we’ve not won a trophy and that’s ultimately that’s what we want, if we don’t do that we’ll be really disappointed.”

Ulster lost their first two games after the restart against Connacht and Leinster but McFarland hopes the side is not back up to full speed after win at Murrayfield.

“We’ve been slow to start, we’re not the only ones, I think there’s teams all across who didn’t pick up at the level they were at before, there’s a number of reasons for that and we’ll be looking at that,” said McFarland.

“We had to be up there in terms of our mental approach and once things started clicking, we looked a lot better.

“Sometimes cohesiveness takes time.

“I would have liked it a little bit earlier, like kick-off against Connacht, but it doesn’t really matter now, we won the semi-final.”

McFarland had special praise for man of the match Rob Lyttle, at 12-0 the match looked to be slipping away from Ulster before the winger scored a superb solo try which was to prove the catalyst for the comeback.

“Rob played really well,” he said. “He’s got electric feet, he’s a difficult man, a slippery customer.

“He’s worked really hard on his defence with Jared (Payne), done a really good job, and he’s made himself a player that gets picked to be first-choice for a semi-final.

“When we needed him to produce the goods, he does that.

“If there’s one man, you want to beat people in traffic, I’d pick him.”

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