Ulster’s Sean Reidy highlights Dan McFarland influence

The flanker, capped twice by Ireland, has played in all five games - making three starts, scoring two tries and collecting two ‘man-of-the-match’ awards.

Reidy believes the influence of Dan McFarland is driving Ulster and him personally to a season’s successful start.

“When Dan first turned up he specifically asked to get a bit more around my defence and physicality, I work with him and Jared to work on that,” said Reidy. “The main thing we get out of Dan is just working hard for each other, we have all got that vision and we all have that goal in the back of our mind that we want to be the best team we can be.

“We want to keep pushing each other and we are not happy with being average and that is something that Dan has brought in that we work hard for each other and we fight for every inch.

“At the end of the season we want to be competing for those championships and you don’t get that by not putting in the work.”

Reidy also believes the work defence coach Jared Payne is doing is paying off in matches.

“Jared isn’t too long out of the game so he has got a load of fresh ideas and has a real good understanding of the game which is awesome,” he said. “As a D (defence) coach you want guys getting of the line, you want guys working hard for each other if someone makes a mistake you want guys scrambling and you are there to back each other up.

“As a D coach Jared just tries to bring the best out of us, to express ourselves through our defence by making double hits and just generally making the guys around you feel quite good by the work you do.”

Ulster travel to Zebre on Monday night looking to win their opening three away games in a season for the first time in eight years.

“It’s a game at a time, we definitely think about our away form and we bring that back to our defence, defence wins away games so that is what we keep focus on,” he said. “If we can turn up with some good D and get them on the back foot it will put us in a good place, you want to keep picking up those away wins and we have been doing that thus far.”

Zebre have already beaten the Ospreys and only lost by a point to the Scarlets last weekend and Reidy has marked out former Leinster and Ulster lock Ian Nagle as one of the danger man for the Italians.

“He’s a good player, he has had his fair share of injuries, he’s a very good lineout operator, he’s a physical guy around the pitch,” said Reidy. “I don’t know if any of you guys watched that Scarlets game on the weekend he put in a lot of good tackles and had a few great lineouts, he’s a good around player and is definitely one of those guys we have got to look after this weekend.”