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Ulster boss Dan McFarland relishing shot at old foes

Ulster No.8 Duane Vermeulen - PA

Ulster head coach Dan McFarland was thrilled as his side ended their losing run to book a place in the Champions Cup last-16 by beating Sale at Kingspan Stadium.

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Having lost their last three matches, as well as six of seven, in all competitions, this first victory of their European campaign was enough to scrape through from Pool B after tries from Rob Lyttle, Rob Herring and Duane Vermeulen helped them to a 22-11 victory.

Barring a huge loss by Montpellier at home to London Irish today, they will go through as eighth seeds and meet Irish rivals Leinster in the knock-out stages.

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“That’s the goal, you want to play in the play-off games and we’ve done it again,” McFarland said after advancing from the pools for a fourth time in his five seasons in charge. “I think our reward is a trip to Leinster.

“I quite fancy Leinster, challenge yourself against the best.

“We came out, we wanted to put on a performance at home, in front of our fans, in our house, and I thought the crowd was electric tonight, the atmosphere was brilliant.

“I think a chunk of that was to do with how we played. I thought we were excellent on both sides of the ball. It wasn’t perfect obviously but Sale are a really good team, they don’t let many tries in.

“I thought across the board we had some fantastic performances.”

Sale coach Alex Sanderson had no complaints with the result, praising Ulster for seizing control in the second half.

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“It’s not that tough to stomach actually,” he said. “Given the momentum shift in the second half I think Ulster thoroughly deserved it.

“They had us in the set-piece and they won most of the collisions and when you have those two things as feathers in your cap and you’re in the opposition half for 30-35 minutes, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion.

“I’ve accepted that for what it is. Brilliant by them and we need to improve on certain aspects of our game that are our bread and butter.”

Second in the Premiership, Sale will quickly turn their attention back to domestic matters.

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“We’re going well there,” Sanderson added. “That’s always the way, it’s the hamster wheel and you’ve got to get back on it.

“We’ll get back into the Prem next week with Bath at home.

“The Challenge Cup is still something we’ll focus on because of the exposure it brings young lads, and there were a lot of young lads out there tonight.

“They’ll be all the better for that, coming here and understanding what it’s about at this level.”

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J
JW 23 minutes ago
Why the Aussie revival is for real and what it means for New Zealand

Yes, true, reading your first sentence I immediately remember reports of them just leaving them be, which also doesn’t sound very smart now. Quite a minor thing, but like with the “further stipulations” suggestion I had, even minor oversights can cause big problems!


Right, so that old decision basically came down to the Rebels license being newer (still in effect) that meant it was the Force that had to be cut? You can’t really extrapolate one to the other of course. Theres no hindsight ability to be able to say “well we should have taken out losses and cut the Rebels”.


I can agree on your last point/para, even though it’s largely the same argument you presented in your OP which I tried refuting. I say it’s similar really because it comes under the same ‘risk’ management as spreading your pro population. They wanted to be able to provide more opportunities to retain the likes of the Meafou’s, just as much as the wanted to tap in further to those Meafou’s in Melbourne. Bringing in the Rebels was the best way to do this, but perhaps it should’t have been done at such a sacrifice.


All considered though, it’s hard to know if one should believe the reports that the Rebels had a way out of the dilemma. They obviously had individuals involved powerful enough to make the State retaliate towards RA, but my stance had been that COVID and so, the stopped payment, had been what put them under. I don’t lay fault with RA for their demise, but I also had a bigger expectation that Melbourne was the sporting captial of Australia. It really does just seem like a AFL land however (they reckoned their 10k crowd was enough but it’s hard to believe).

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