BOUNCING BACK

Stepping on Lego is painful. Especially in the dark it makes it even worse that you can’t see it coming.

Having stepped on the Lego you do not then keep your foot on the block and increase the pain. No, you remove your foot, take a step back and then take a very deliberate step over the Lego block and ensure you don’t make the same mistake again. It’s how we avoid pain – we learn from our errors and persist in rectifying them.

Ulster must avoid their Lego block again.

It’s too late, they’ve already stepped on their Munster shaped block once, now they have to ensure they don’t leave it stuck to their foot. Ulster have to make sure they shake off their defeat to Munster and get back in the right mindset for their trip to Oyonnax, because the French side, despite their failings in Europe thus far, will not be in any mood to surrender a fourth defeat on the spin in the Champions’ Cup and concede that they are the weakest side in Pool One.

Even though that tag may already be firmly planted on them, Oyonnax will not have any plans of rolling over in front of their home crowd. No doubt their interests will be firmly rooted in the Top14, but for their own sakes they need momentum and it would be wise for them to send out something resembling a full side for this game in order to gain a victory that would boost the morale of a battered squad.

So while the logic would be to stick your money on an Ulster five-pointer, there is a lot more to consider than just how the two sides have fared so far. On Saturday you would have put your money on a home win and look what happened there.

Is it cause for concern? Probably not.

Every team has a bad day at the office, and you’re inclined to believe that was Ulster’s. On another day perhaps a pass would have stuck and a try would have been scored, or perhaps Paddy Jackson would have found that extra couple of metres and put his kick over. But the ifs and the buts are simply wishful thinking – they did not happen, let us not consider them with more than a passing comment.

Instead let us remind ourselves that what took the field against Munster was more or less a similar side to that which started against, and annihilated, Toulouse only three weeks previous. Has that side suddenly become a terrible side in three weeks? Of course not.

It is simply the fact that against Toulouse everything clicked. Against Munster everything did not.

In some ways I think it’s a good thing that was the case. We’ve been served a rugby lesson in the harshest way possible – after the highs of the Toulouse wins we’ve been reminded that there will be games where we will not perform at our best and we need to find ways to grind out victories there too. We did in Galway, against Munster it proved that there is more to be done.

If, say, we were to go to Oyonnax this weekend and we performed like that again and were beaten then perhaps there is a case to be brought. But given the delightful rugby we were served against Toulouse and then the dogged win achieved in Galway I am more inclined to believe that that is the kind of rugby we can more look forward to from this Ulster side as the season goes on. It will not work week in week out, but when they do it will be poetry in motion.

So let’s drop the knee jerk reactions. No team wins every game all season (well, Saracens are giving it a good go), and it is how we bounce back from this defeat that will define the character of this squad. We will head to Oyonnax knowing that five points will put us right in the hunt for a Champions’ Cup quarter-final place, and it would be a remarkable achievement and a testament to our organisation at a whole that we shook off the Saracens result and battled back to qualify.

Expect the backlash.