I won't measure Ulster progress on wins alone, insists McFarland

Kingspan chief admits victories are crucial but he is also keen on performances and attitude

Clock ticking: Dan McFarland is sweating on Stuart McCloskey’s fitness

Clock ticking: Dan McFarland is sweating on Stuart McCloskey’s fitness

©INPHO/Tommy Dickson

Injured Iain Henderson

�INPHO/Billy Stickland

Clock ticking: Dan McFarland is sweating on Stuart McCloskey’s fitness

Jonathan Bradley of Belfast Telegraph (Photo by Kevin Scott for Belfast Telegraph)

Jonathan Bradley Twitter Email

September 02 2020 06:43 AM

Back in the days before rugby went professional, Dan McFarland was both a prop for Morley and a teacher in training.

As 1995 turned to '96, and the game in England went open, sporting endeavours won out over scholarly pursuits, and yet, as he sits today, the similarities between his job as Ulster's head coach and the road not taken extend beyond the need to impart wisdom onto the next generation.

Just as he would have worked with his would-be pupils for an entire year only to have their efforts judged on one end-of-year exam, he understands the reality that the season his players started to prepare for all the way back in the summer of 2019 will be viewed almost solely through the prism of its next 80 minutes and Saturday's trip to Edinburgh for a Guinness PRO14 semi-final.

Having reached this stage of the competition, as well as the European last-eight in his first year in Belfast, one more win represents the symbolic next step.

And with only the most optimistic of followers not acknowledging that travel restrictions and growing Covid-19 cases in the sport have imperilled the Champions Cup and Ulster's quarter-final against Toulouse in a fortnight's time, it could well prove that Murrayfield is the only chance to show demonstrably that this side is better than the last, that the McFarland project's rapid pace of improvement in year one has carried into year two.

Right or wrong, the head coach accepts the premise.

"Ultimately in sport, improvement is measured in wins," he said. "That's the only currency you have. That's all you have that's definitive, that you can mark, (even though) in terms of results you're at the whim of variables that you can't control.

"Theoretically you could make unbelievable progress in a year, it just so happens that everyone else has made more progress, or just that two other teams have.

"You might play remarkably well all year and then you're hamstrung by injuries at a particular point of the season. Me personally, I want to win massively but I'll be looking more at the performance and how we got to this point to measure whether we made improvement or not.

"But significant improvement would probably be measured as a win."

The point regarding being beset by injuries is likely no theoretical comment given how many regulars will be missing the biggest game of Ulster's season through untimely injury.

Five sure starters are already out - skipper Iain Henderson, backs Robert Baloucoune, Will Addison and Luke Marshall, as well as flanker Sean Reidy - while yesterday's statement on the availability of Jordi Murphy, Jacob Stockdale and Stuart McCloskey did little to raise hopes that the key trio would avoid being forced into joining their team-mates on the absentee list.

If preparations have been hampered by knocks, not to mention a pair of confidence-sapping losses since resuming after lockdown, McFarland notes that his own build-up has been coloured by the experience of last season when, at this stage, Glasgow trounced his side to the tune of a 30-point margin.

A first-year head coach at that stage, with a young team of assistants around him, it was a tough lesson.

"Last year was disappointing," he said. "We were knocked over by the first wave and never got back to our feet, or at least not until it was too late.

"I thought Glasgow were excellent in that game, really good, and I remember saying at the time that I didn't know whether us at our best would have won that game at that point.

"I still don't know whether we would have done but the disappointment was that we didn't play as well as we could have done and that really soured that experience for me.

"I know there's a hunger in the squad this year that we want to give it our best shot this time. It's a difficult task, there's only ever been two wins in away semi-finals, both by Scarlets, in the history of the PRO14 so I know the difficulty of what's in front of us but we want to give it a better shot than we did last year and put out a better performance.

"We've talked about all the work that has gone in from a fabulous support staff here and the young men who have gone out onto the pitch week in, week out to get us into the position where we have a semi-final to play. It's a pretty unique season but we're relishing the opportunity that we manufactured for ourselves."