Bright future for Ulster if Wasps are swatted, insists Best
getting that improvement is another thing.
“That’s frustrating. With our group, because we haven’t had success recently, and we haven’t had the number of really, really successful players that we should have had, it’s almost now a re-education process.
“You’re saying, ‘this is what you’ve got to put in, this is what has got to happen every week’.
“I do think there’s a massive correlation with us, because we’re relatively immature in a rugby sense, that when we train well, very rarely do we not play well. Whenever we don’t train well, you’re in the lap of the gods sometimes. You can tell a lot from our training sessions in terms of mentally how switched on we are. Then, generally, you get that transfer into the game.”
As Kiss said last week, an organisation has to be better than its weakest links and for a campaigner as experienced as Best there are tell-tale signs in training of when his side are, and indeed aren’t, in the mindset for elite competition.
The moment he knew they were ready for La Rochelle came when former All Black Charles Piutau, a man soon to be the best paid player in the world, flung himself to the ground to kill a dead ball, a simple thing but something that, when not done against Leinster in the RDS a week prior, cost a try.
“As a player group we prepared a lot better for La Rochelle. That’s what we need to realise. Yes, people listen to what you say, but ultimately they look at what you do,” said Best.
“There were small moments during the week you could see it. There was one stage a ball went down and Charles Piutau flew onto the ground to dive on it.
“We knew that La Rochelle can be lethal with that sort of thing and the attitude to stop it was there all week. If you get a young kid like Rob Lyttle, 19/20, handful of Ulster caps, but hasn’t been around that much, and he looks at a New Zealander, and how much he’ll be earning and stuff next year, it clicks with him that Charles does this during the week and then goes out and does what he does on Saturday, with that desire, that intent.
“That’s what I mean by the education of boys. I know from a captain’s point of view, certainly from a coach’s point of view, it can be frustrating when you don’t get it.
“You can put stuff in place but they’ve got to learn it themselves to then do it themselves, and that’s when you see the difference. It’s unfortunate but that’s all you can do. I know (coach) Jono (Gibbes) especially gets frustrated. He’s been around Leinster and Clermont teams that win, he’s seen it first hand, he can see that it’s there for us, we just have to graft.
“We prepared ourselves to have to go against La Rochelle and, it sounds cliched, but empty the tank.
“We had to go to a place where we were exhausted. Top teams don’t just hand you wins. In the RDS, one of the most frustrating things was that you came off the pitch and the next day, you felt reasonably alright.
“That says to me, if you have that little bit of freshness, then you didn’t commit everything to that game. This week, even on Monday, getting out of bed was a chore. You were rolling out sideways and trying to get every joint straightened out as you go along.
“As sick as it sounds that’s what you want. That’s when you know there was nothing left to give.”
Nothing less will do come Sunday afternoon — Best must take Ulster to the well once more.
Rory Best gave an exclusive interview to the Belfast Telegraph at an event to promote Glenisk GO-YOs and the IRFU’s Official Trading Cards. Every pack of GO-YOs includes three cards featuring heroes from the men’s and women’s senior teams. Parents can sign their kids up at Glenisk.com