IN THE AFTERMATH of a result as damaging as blowing a 19-point lead by conceding 35 unanswered points against a 14-man opposition away from home, there is a danger of saying too much.

For Alan O’Connor, who is part of the leadership group at Ulster, this week’s training was about striking the balance between trying to say something constructive to help them move on from that Leinster loss but also not overdo it.

“It is always a hard one, but I suppose it is always when you feel you can add value,” explains the second row, who cites Jared Payne, Rory Best and Chris Henry as his inspirations as a leader.

“I’m not going to talk for the sake of talking, I don’t like talking to people really. But if I have something to say, I have to say it or else you are letting other people down and letting yourself down.

You have to have a feel for it, and that is why being experienced is a big help because maybe you have seen the situation in a game before.”
O’Connor has experience of losing to Leinster before that he could draw upon, but he’s never had to approach the dissection of a defeat in Dublin in this exact way.

Usually it’s a brave effort from the visitors that comes up short. In the further past, it would have been an under-strength side being mercilessly torn apart by a much more recognisable Leinster team. But never before has it been Ulster holding a commanding lead against their hosts, who are a man down, only to surrender it tamely after the restart.

Garry Ringrose tore them apart with a wonderful individual display. The pack never got a foothold after they lost an early line-out in the second-half. Two yellow cards almost simultaneously killed any sliver of momentum they had left.

This one hurt, you could see it on the faces at the full-time whistle. The province may never get a better chance to rack up a win at the RDS Arena – potentially to even make it a lopsided scoreline in their favour – and they couldn’t get the job done.

“You’ve got to take it personally, otherwise you don’t really care, do you?” adds O’Connor, himself from Skerries and a former Leinster sub-Academy member.

“A lot of the guys, myself included, we’ve had a good look at ourselves the last two days and took some good learnings today. You have to look forward, you can’t dwell too much on last week because we have massive games coming up with two inter-pros and Europe.

“You have to learn quickly, feel defeat and take what’s happened and get better.”

The biggest takeaway for Ulster is that they can’t define themselves on one bad half. Sure, they were a long way short of the required level at the RDS, but then all teams have their lulls throughout a long and testing season and that was just a second loss of the season for Dan McFarland’s men.

“We have shown plenty of times this year how good we are, it doesn’t change in 25 minutes of rugby,” counters O’Connor.

We don’t turn into a bad team, we didn’t deal with situations as well as we could, we didn’t take opportunities we should have which let them back into the game (Leinster).

“It is all learning stuff and we are going to start our European campaign now and I’m looking forward to it.”

There’s no better fixture to refocus the minds than your Heineken Champions Cup opener, and with England’s second-best side – at least by the Gallagher Premiership standings anyway – Sale Sharks at the AJ Bell Stadium the opponents, another performance of that ilk won’t get the job done.

With only four pool games, Ulster know they can ill-afford any slip-ups if they want to secure home seeding for the knockouts, and a defeat in their first outing would leave them backed into a corner before they’ve even faced defending European champions La Rochelle.

They will, however, be hoping that this is the first step on the road to potentially making some unforgettable European memories. After the pain of being eliminated in the last-16 at home by Toulouse last season, there is almost a feeling that the tournament owes them something.

In the short-term, though, it’s about ensuring all those painful memories of the RDS filter into the background noise as quickly as possible. Once those European rugby balls come out in training, there’s a job at hand and it requires full mental focus, and that starts from the leadership group down at Kingspan Stadium.

“It is the perfect week to be getting back onto the horse,” believes O’Connor.

“Sale have a massive pack, good runners, good maul defence. We have a good maul attack so we will look forward to that. There are plenty of things in the game where we can impose ourselves and impose our will on the opposition.

“I thought last year we did well in the group stages and we want to do that again and give ourselves the best chance of moving on.

“Starting away is a big challenge because every team is relishing that first home Champions Cup game. They’ll be mad up for it and we’ll be up for it because we know how big a challenge it is.

“We know how good we can be for parts of that Leinster game, which we were, so we’ll be looking to bring some of that over there and look forward to the confrontations.”

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