ULSTER HEAD COACH Dan McFarland blasted European Professional Club Rugby officials for their decision to switch their Heineken Champions Cup clash against Stade Rochelais to the Aviva Stadium, declaring Kingspan Stadium as “playable” on Saturday morning.

The province were due to take on the defending European champions in Belfast on Saturday evening, but a pitch inspection on Friday evening by referee Luke Pearce saw a contingency plan initiated that moved the tie down to Dublin at less than 24 hours’ notice.

Not only that, but a lack of security at short notice meant that the game was played behind closed doors, apart from a small group of travelling French ‘delegates’, something else that did not go down well with the ‘home’ side.

In the end, Ulster were on the end of a 36-29 defeat by Ronan O’Gara’s men, however the scoreline tells only a fraction of the tale as McFarland’s men fell 29-0 down at the interval but managed to fight back in the second half to take two bonus points from the affair.

Despite the thrilling spectacle on the pitch, the talking point after the game was still the pitch two hours up the road, with McFarland sticking to his pre-game line that the game could – and should – have gone ahead at Kingspan Stadium instead of being moved to Dublin.

“My personal opinion is that we were there this morning at 10 o’clock, 9.30am, and that pitch was playable,” he said.

“I was there the night before and the people there predicted that it was going to be playable. The work that the people did, the staff and volunteers, to get that pitch ready was phenomenal under the circumstances. It was ready.

“We knew it was going to be ready because the weather was predicted to change overnight. But that decision was taken away from us.

“The bottom line is the decision was wrong. It could have been played at Ravenhill.”

McFarland was also asked why the organisation weren’t able to have a pitch inspection on Saturday morning as opposed to Friday evening, but the head coach was unable to provide an answer.

“All I know is the pitch was playable and we didn’t play on it. As a consequence, it wasn’t an occasion, it was a game,” he sighed.

But the atmosphere was something that was worth discussing, too. In any other circumstance, Ulster’s stirring second half comeback would have been spurred on by 18,000 vociferous home fans as opposed to the deathly silence echoing around the Aviva Stadium.

Tries from Iain Henderson, John Cooney, Duane Vermeulen and Tom Stewart earned McFarland’s side two bonus points which keep their hopes of qualifying for the knockout stages alive at the halfway point of Pool B alive, which is particularly pleasing given at half-time it looked like they were going to fail to put a point on the board for the second week running.

Still, McFarland was not pleased with the overall feel around what should have been one of Ulster’s biggest games of the entire season, particularly in the context of the £700k loss the province are going to make once they refund fans for their tickets, and argued that European rugby is more important than just what happens on the pitch.

“I’ve been involved in European rugby for more than 20 years. I played in the first season of European rugby in what was then the Challenge Cup with Richmond, I played Challenge Cup with Connacht, I’ve coached in the Champions Cup with Glasgow and with Ulster and with Connacht,” he pointed out.

“There is more to European rugby than a game played between four lines. There’s more than that. It’s an occasion. Whether you’re in Thomond playing Toulouse, whether you’re in (Ravenhill) playing against Racing, whether you’re in Welford Road watching Dan Cole win his 300th cap, it’s an occasion.

“It has spirit, it has feeling. If you want to reduce it to the word product, the product is more than just the game. To me, that should be remembered in the decision making in this sort of thing.

“We all remember what games were like during Covid. Where’s the heart and soul in those games? You’d watch it in the same way you’d watch an e-sports tournament.

“Whether you watch it on TV or sat in the stands, the occasion is lost without fans in the stadium. The game isn’t lost, the occasion is lost. The product is more than just the game.”

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