Ulster praise for ‘big time’ Ian Madigan

Ulster now travel to the Aviva Stadium on Saturday night to face Leinster in the PRO14 final.

“Anybody who knows ‘Mads’ knows he’s big time,” said McFarland. “I’ve watched him kick goals at the end of games, I’ve watched him make great plays in crucial moments in games.

“He did a great job, it was just one of those things where we needed a bit of impact there, and that’s not taking anything away from Billy (Burns) because he looked pretty good in both games he’s played in, but having that kind of 10 who can come in and make an impact like that in big games is pretty important, we all know that.”

Ulster became only the second team in PRO rugby history to win a semi-final on the road.

“The mental challenge of winning away in a semi-final is huge, it’s absolutely huge,” said McFarland. “We talked all week about the fact that if we wanted to win this game, nothing would be given to us, only taken.

“We had to approach the game in the sense that it had to be us that went out and won it, and sure enough, in that first half Edinburgh gave us nothing.

“It was only in the second half when we added a little bit of an extra dimension to our attack and made a couple of extra tweaks that we were able to get some success.”

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