INTERVIEW IAN HUMPHREYS:THOSE WHO went to Ulster players this week to seek out eulogies to Leinster might have felt a sudden drop in room temperature. Any prospect of Ulster engaging in defeatist language or rising to the idea of glorious failure at the RDS would have ignored the philosophy this season of the Ulster sons marching forward.
Despite Leinster winning both meetings this season and holding their pattern of unbroken success, the past, which is as recent as just last month, is not where Ulster have been dwelling this week. Tonight’s meeting is about continuing to nudge forward. Ulster are a little bullish.
“We definitely believe we are in with a shout of winning the competition. We are not satisfied with just getting to where we are now. We want to go ahead and win. The performance a few weeks ago opened our eyes. Leinster blew us away in the first 25 minutes. There was no coming back,” says Ulster outhalf Ian Humphreys, speaking as though the beating was strength-giving, if also something of a salutary lesson.
“When we play top sides we have to go from the off or it will be an uphill struggle. On any day Leinster are pretty strong and they have shown whatever players they have put in this season they have been up to the job. But I don’t want to blow them up too much. Last match we let ourselves down. We think we owe them one”
Three tries in the opening 13 minutes from Richardt Strauss, Luke Fitzgerald and Shane Horgan on the way to a 34-26 win on April 16th was the sort of start Humphreys and his side will wish to avoid.
Playing without four international players – Andrew Trimble, Paddy Wallace, BJ Botha and Stephen Ferris – makes the task more fraught. Don’t dare suggest it to Humphreys. This is no time to be looking for holes in the plan.
“We’ve been without Stevie for a while,” he says. “Sure he’s a game breaker and a talisman in the Ulster team. But we’ve players who have come in. Cavey (Darren Cave) and Nevin (Spence) have both shown how good they are. Paddy’s (Wallace) out and Cavey’s back. It’s not ideal but we think we’ve built a squad. Every squad has to perform with injury. We’re no different.”
The one aspect of the meeting that has Ulster fired and edgy is that they can see the end line. It appears to give them clarity of purpose. Not unlike the end of an Olympic 10,000 metres track race where the athletes run 24 laps at an even pace before the bell goes and all hell breaks loose with the most fatigued-looking runner in the group taking off in one last lung-bursting effort.
“The big games have shown us you have got to be on the money,” explains Humphreys. “Against Northampton we were leading at half-time. It is just a matter of experience of us being able to cope when they have their purple patch and being able to get back in the game if we go a few points behind.
“I think for us to be taken seriously the Leinster game is the kind of game where we need to perform and show that we are capable of playing with the bigger teams.”
Ulster have already reached all of the goals they set out prior to the season beginning. Progress has been tangible so the squad feels it is not trying to overreach to hit a mark.
But their sense is of having underachieved in the last number of years to a point where they felt they were losing support from their fans and even from the Ulster board.
“For fans it’s been a rough couple of years of not much to shout about,” he says. “But the games against Biarritz, against Northampton have given us the experience to play against teams like that. We have always believed that we have quality. We definitely feel that this weekend we can push on.”
Leinster, he concedes, can “rip you apart”. But only if you let them. Give Leinster points, let them break your line and grow in confidence, show them your frailties and they will bite. But as Humphreys sees it, those areas can be controlled by Ulster.
“We need one game to show we are up there,” he says.
Is this one it?
