Stuart Lancaster looing for consistency as Racing lose out in Ulster

The former Leinster coach is still bedding into the job in Paris.

Racing 92 head coach Stuart Lancaster before the Investec Champions Cup Pool 2 Round 2 match at Kingspan Stadium in Belfast. Picture: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Embracing the challenge of leaving Leinster for Racing 92, Stuart Lancaster describes his early months in France as an effort to even out the rollercoaster ride.

The Parisens lead the Top 14 after nine rounds but the former England head coach's new side lost both their Champions Cup games over the last fortnight, latterly to Ulster at Kingspan Stadium on Saturday night.

While the three-time beaten finalists at least had the consolation of a pair of bonus-points from the opening round defeat at home to Harlequins, they returned from Belfast with nothing to show for their efforts in a 31-15 reverse.

"It's certainly a challenge but it's what I wanted to do," said Lancaster of leaving Leinster after seven seasons.

"I wanted to challenge myself as a coach, to come to France and try to build something as consistent and successful as Leinster has become. Obviously, I'm very proud of my time there, I really enjoyed it.

"Now I'm at Racing, my goal is to try and develop that consistency and I'm very pleased with the application of the players.

"We've a diverse group of players not just from different parts of France but different parts of the world.

"I think we're going to build something special but obviously as you can see we're still a work in progress which is understandable."

Perhaps as evidenced by the stark contrast between their domestic standing and their start to the Champions Cup, consistency is the element he is most keen to bring from the RDS to the French capital.

"The thing I'm striving for is consistency and consistency of performance comes from consistency in training," he said.

"I spend all my time thinking about how we can be more consistent in training and pushing them to be more consistent in training.

"I think that's the sort of rollercoaster ride that I'm trying to even out."

Their loss in Belfast came after a sharp Ulster attack ran in four tries over the game's first 50 minutes with Nolann Le Garrec's struggles from the tee making it all the more difficult for the visitors to stay within touching distance.

The key moment in the game came when the French scrum-half saw a first-half try chalked off for blocking in the build up and Ulster went straight down the other end to take a 14-0 lead.

Despite now sitting with just two points from two games, Lancaster is far from ready to throw the towel in on the Champions Cup campaign to focus on domestic matters.

"I've been in Europe long enough to know we've still got a chance of qualifying," said the man who won this competition with Leinster in 2018, beating Racing in the Bilbao final.

"We're a new team having come together two or three months ago.

"I'm a new head coach. We've got a new coaching team, new players, ten came back from a World Cup less than a month ago.

"It feels like we're still in that process of developing our cohesion whereas Ulster clearly understand what they're doing. They've done it year in and year out and on days like today they can raise their game to another level.

"We've got to fight to get in the last-16 now. Clearly it's going to be away but that's our objective.

"Leinster played Ulster in the last-16 last year and Ulster had won one game so of course it's possible.

"Two teams out of our pool won't make it but we've a chance to go to Bath and win and beat Cardiff at home."

Having ended a three-game losing streak in emphatic style, Ulster meanwhile can now have designs on making the knock-out stages for a fifth time in six seasons.

Poor against Bath at the Rec last week in a game that saw them ship 29 unanswered points in the second-half, one win from fixtures against Toulouse and Harlequins in the new year could even be enough to secure safe passage through to the last-16.

"Definitely our best for a while," reflected northern province boss Dan McFarland. "Speaking to a number of the senior players in the week, they had a feeling that we're bubbling away, that the opportunities that we created, particularly with the ball the last two games against Bath and against Edinburgh, had us feeling that we'd left a lot out there.

"But also confident that the foundations of what we're trying to put together are there but some of the detail around making it work wasn't.

"We made a strategic decision at the start of the year that we were going to try and move the ball a bit more.

"We changed the shape and it's taking a bit of time but in those first 40 minutes it looked a lot more like what we were trying to achieve."

Ulster Rugby: M Lowry; R Baloucoune, J Hume, S McCloskey, J Stockdale; B Burns, J Cooney; S Kitshoff, R Herring, T O'Toole; A O'Connor, I Henderson (c); D Ewers, N Timoney, Mattie Rea.

Replacements: T Stewart- (for Herring, 10-22, 55) E O'Sullivan (for Kitshoff, 76), S Wilson (for O'Toole, 76), K Treadwell (for O'Connor, 60), H Sheridan (for Rea, 60), N Doak (for Cooney, 78), J Flannery (for Burns, 52), S Moore (for McCloskey, 78) 

Racing 92: M Spring; H Arundell, G Fickou, H Chavancy, J Imhoff; A Gibert, N le Garrec, H Kolingar, J Tarrit, T Nyakane; B Chouzenoux, W Rowlands; C Woki, S Kolisi, W Lauret.

Replacements: E Ben Arous (for Tarrit, 70), G Gogichashvili (for Kolingar, 52), G Kharaishvili (for Nyakane, 61), F Sanconnie (for Chouzenoux, 40) I Diallo (for Kolisi, 55), M Baudonne (for Woki, 55), T Tedder (for Arundell, 61), I Tabuavou (for Chavancy, 61)

Referee: L Pearce (Eng)