Ulster bank on battling it out in tight Cup games

Edging tight games has become a hallmark of Ulster’s Champions Cup campaign, with a combined winning margin of seven points across the three pool matches.

One-point wins over Bath away, and Harlequins at home on Saturday, plus a relatively straightforward five-point home victory over Clermont, have put Ulster top of their group.

With trips to London and France to come, Stuart McCloskey knows they can’t afford to ease up but says they are taking heart from their ability to dig out results.

“You will hear a lot of players talking about that,” he says. “You take confidence from battling out tight games. A total margin of about six or seven points over the three games isn’t good for anybody’s heart but we do take heart from being able to grind out tough wins now, which we probably couldn’t have done a couple of years ago.”

McCloskey, 27, was Ulster’s Player of the Year last season. By his own admission he hasn’t hit those heights again just yet but produced a strong ball-carrying display alongside Luke Marshall in Saturday’s 25-24 win over Harlequins.

He’s feeling good ahead of the second leg of the back-to-back games with ’Quins at the Stoop on Friday.

I had a few injuries at the start of the year so wasn’t quite at it. I wasn’t playing badly but just not at the level of last year, though in the last two weeks I think I’ve played quite well.

“We still have things to improve on and things I was struggling on are starting to come back and I’m starting to get into that flow. We want to push on and keep top spot in the pool but we will need to improve because they were quite strong.”

Head coach Dan McFarland insisted his team can’t consider itself a top eight team yet, despite being strong contenders for a quarter-final place for the second year running under him.

Consistency is what he is striving for, and so far he regards Ulster’s form as a bit of a mixed bag.

“He’s not going to be wrong,” smiled McCloskey. “There are moments where we look very good and could be a top team, but other times we look like we’ve been dragged together with guys not being on the same page.

“We need to iron out a few things. But when you look at where we are now compared to when he came in, it’s night and day. We are challenging teams and we don’t go to any team and fear we are going to get beat by a lot, we feel we can beat anyone on our day even though we’re not the finished article.

“We are moving in the right direction.”

Ulster have no fresh injury concerns ahead of Friday’s game with Marcell Coetzee the only one carrying a slight knock.