Brussels sprouts Ulster’s Euro hopes

ULSTER coach Brian McLaughlin is hoping that the province can profit from Stade Francais’s decision to face the Irish side at Brussels’ King Baudoin Stadium in December.

The French club has rarely been slow to move matches from its on Parisian home, Stade Jean Bouin, but has until now travelled only as far as the suburb of Saint-Denis and the Stade de France.

This will not be the first time that an Irish province has been asked to play in a non-traditional rugby heartland. Munster have previously contested Heineken Cup matches in both Spain and Switzerland.

However, Ulster have three rounds of action to negotiate before their Belgian adventure and McLaughlin is well aware that their fate could well be sealed by December if they fail to fire from the first gun.

“Playing Stade in Brussels is great for us,” said the Ulster coach. “It’s great for the opposition. Really it depends on how many Parisians decide to travel to Brussels. It’s another game that we’re looking forward to but we’re going to focus on Bath and focus on Edinburgh first. Those are the first games, home and away.

“We’ve got to be right for those. The key thing that we’ve been emphasising is consistency and that we have to play at our optimum level. We can’t fall below that. If we fall below that we’ll make it very, very difficult for ourselves. We’ll be looking to put a top display down in all of our Heineken Cup games.”

Pivotal to that will be Ulster’s home form. There was a time when Ravenhill was rarely mentioned without the word ‘Fortress’ attached as a prefix but the province’s record in Belfast is no longer a daunting one.

“That’s very important for us. It’s very important that we try and get Ravenhill back up to what it was five, six, seven years ago. It’s very important that we play with that intensity, with that pride and passion because that’s what our fans want to see and certainly we’ll be trying to do it with pride and passion, yes, but with rugby being the winner, hopefully.”