Ulster are searching for a spark
“I know there is a hunger in the squad this year”
DAN McFARLAND would have expected some early-season rust from his squad in this rebooted season, but Ulster’s pragmatic head coach must have been alarmed by the events of the past few weeks.
That 26-20 loss to Connacht on the opening weekend suggested a contest that was a lot tighter than it seemed. The Westerners were the sharper outfit for most of that Sunday afternoon. McFarland cited Glasgow’s defeat by Edinburgh the night before as a possible reason for the lethargy in Ulster’s ranks, a result which meant his side’s place in the Pro14 semi-finals was assured.
Knowing that date in Murrayfield was booked, Ulster were poised to bounce back the following weekend against an understrength Leinster. They were slow out of the blocks again, however, as Leo Cullen’s second-string cruised to a 28-10 victory.
The lockdown has clearly not been kind to an Ulster squad which was building nicely before everything stopped in March. Since the restart last month, Ulster have been sloppy, indisciplined and lethargic.
Big improvements are needed tonight or it could get ugly against a quality Edinburgh outfit.
They are clearly missing the leadership of Iain Henderson at lock as well as Will Addison’s creative spark out wide, while John Cooney has yet to hit the heights of earlier this year when he was being hailed as the form scrum-half in the country.
Stuart McCloskey and Marcell Coetzee have continued to deliver the gain-line thrust but they can’t do it all. The Edinburgh backrow — including the brilliant Hamish Watson at openside — will shut down those threats pretty quickly.
Ulster can’t afford another slow start but this isn’t a new problem. They faced Glasgow at this stage of the competition last year in Scotstoun and were ruthlessly punished for a sluggish first-half display. Dave Rennie’s side showed no mercy and duly pummelled the visitors 50-20.
Away wins in Pro14 semi-finals are rare, and when you take that into account as well as Ulster’s poor form on the road this year, it makes tonight’s assignment all the more daunting.
But McFarland insisted earlier this week that lessons of that semi-final shellacking have been heeded. ‘We were knocked over by the first wave and then never got back to our feet, well not until it was too late,’ he recalled.
‘Glasgow were excellent in that game and I said at the time that I’m not sure if even us at our best could have won that game, but there was still a disappointment we didn’t play as well as we could have done, which really soured that experience for me. I know there is a hunger in the squad this year that we want to give it our best shot this weekend.
‘There’s only ever been two away semi-final wins in the Pro14, both by Scarlets, we know the difficulty of the task, but we want to give it a better shot than last year.’
McFarland knows Murrayfield and many of Edinburgh’s players very well. The former Connacht prop served as assistant coach to Gregor Townsend at Glasgow and then Scotland before he was lured to Belfast to rebuild a shattered Ulster operation in 2018.
The presence of former Edinburgh flanker Roddy Grant on the Ulster coaching ticket is another interesting subplot.
Richard Cockerill has been doing great work at Edinburgh for three years. This may be the Scottish side’s first semi-final appearance in the history of the competition but they are here on merit.
Duhan van der Merwe — the soon-to-be Scotland qualified South African wing — has been a standout performer in the Pro14 all season and is just one of a host of threats in the side’s backline. Fijian No8 Bill Mata is a key man in a pack laced with Scotland internationals while the outstanding Jamie Ritchie is primed to make an impact from the bench.
All signs point to an emphatic home victory unless Ulster can find that elusive spark tonight.