Ulster's defence coach Joe Barakat chuckled when asked what his reaction was at half-time when Ulster trailed 23-0 to Oyonnax. "Where's the bus to get out of here?"
The story had a happy ending as the Irish province manufactured one of the great Champions Cup comebacks to pip their hosts 24-23. There's been a fair amount written about Rory Best's interval rallying call, when the Ulster captain stressed it was still possible for his side to achieve their original four-try bonus-point objective.
Barakat explained: “What he said had a strong influence in terms of the mindset we took onto the pitch in the second half. Making some crucial changes also gave us another form of stimulus.
Simple review
“I had a really simple review with the boys on Monday. One of my most important points I stressed was that I couldn’t remember the last time that a team actually had made a line-break on us.”
Why so porous? He continued: “Quite simply some of our players just expected Oyonnax footballers to fall over, that they didn’t have to do their job, and Oyonnax taught us a really good lesson in one half of football: that things don’t just happen, you have to make them happen. We stopped trying to make things happen and they made us look really silly.”
Barakat is adamant that Ulster’s pre-game preparation had mimicked the standards set in their victories over Toulouse and that they had factored in playing on Oyonnax’s 3G pitch. The Irish province had trained on one in the week leading up to the match.
The fact that tomorrow they travel to London to face Saracens on a similar artificial surface is an upshot of their rescheduled match in France last weekend.
“The players said coming off the 3G pitch that playing with the ball feels like it’s training, it feels like you are in control of the situation. But when you are chasing the ball on a 3G pitch you feel quite useless and you are always reacting to what your opponents are doing.
Quick surface
“It’s a quick surface and hard to slow the ball down. We need to control the ball and then be able to set the tempo.”
Saracens beat Ulster 27-9 at the Kingspan Stadium but Barakat is keen to point out that the home side were not as far off as the scoreline suggested.
“We know that some of our backfield work was a bit poor in the Saracens game. We need to continually remind ourselves that for 57 minutes of that game we were winning. We are the only team [this season] to be leading Saracens at half-time. That is the impact we had on them.
“Do you need a whole new defensive strategy against such a pragmatic team as Saracens? No, I don’t think you do. They are not going to change the way they play because the way they play wins them games of football and wins them games quite easily.
“We need to recognise the pitch we are playing on, we need to adjust and to be more aggressive at times when the opportunities exist.”
Correct mindset
He talks about empowering the players and then stepping back, aware that individually and collectively the correct mindset will be a cherished attribute in what promises to be a ferociously difficult environment in north London on tomorrow afternoon.
