Dan McFarland reflects on tough period for Ulster

Ulster delighted their home fans as they powered past the Stormers in what was a strong, convincing victory at Kingspan Stadium – an effort which suggested that their recent difficult patch might be over.

Ulster’s next assignment sees them take on Glasgow Warriors on 17 February.

Head Coach Dan McFarland reflected on a period which has tested his and his team’s character:

“I reflect on those 10 games as certainly being the toughest that I’ve done as a head coach, not the toughest I’ve done in coaching, but the toughest I’ve done as a head coach,” he said.

“I think at stages we certainly didn’t play as well as we can do and we were faced by opposition and circumstances that needed us to be on top of our game to even think about getting victories in some of those games.

“So, it made it very tough and there was a little bit of momentum, and obviously when things aren’t going right things continue to not go right.

“I think my biggest draw from that is that we never lost faith in what we do, we believe in the way that we play.

“We believe in what it takes at training and preparation and we never arrived on a Monday morning in ‘flip the table mode’ – it was focused on what are the core things we need to get right and why are they not quite as right as they need to be.

“There was never any sense that we weren’t going to get back to playing well,” he said.

“Over the last three weeks we’ve demonstrated that the belief in what we do has always been there.

“If the confidence had maybe dropped off a little bit you keep working hard and you show belief in the people around you and they respond.”