Ulster: Head coach Dan McFarland admits Pro14 final defeat is tough to get over

Ulster were outplayed by a dominant Leinster in their first final in seven years

Ulster head coach Dan McFarland has admitted that moving past his side's Pro14 final loss has been difficult despite beginning preparations for Sunday's European quarter-final against Toulouse.

The province will meet the four-time winners at Stade Ernest Wallon just eight days after they were well beaten by Leinster in their first final since 2013.

"I think the 48 hours after the final were as difficult as I've done in a long time," said McFarland.

"With any loss, and I mean that in terms of life as well, there's a process of grieving and catharsis that you need to go through, well certainly I do anyway.

"But you have to go through that and my experience is, you know, I've a process that I go through in terms of work, I do a lot of thinking, a fair bit of talking to people and at some point you get through that and the things that you need to do become apparent and the way forward becomes clear.

• Toulouse-Ulster quarter-final moved due to Covid-19

"I have to deal with it, I can't just park it.

"Whereas I know some people, they just want to park it and they just want to move on. I always find that certainly doesn't work for me, I have to feel that I can take some sort of learning from it, I have to feel the pain, recognise the pain, face it down."

'We've just got to play better'

With the Pro14 campaign over, Ulster's attentions now turn to reaching their first European semi-final since 2012.

Last week's loss was the province's third in four matches since rugby's restart, although their overall performances have considerably improved since a tepid display in defeat by Connacht on 22 August.

"The old 'we've got to have a bounce back' is a worn cliche isn't it? We just need to play well," McFarland said.

"It is what it is, we did some really good stuff at the weekend and came up against a team that is one of the best around. On the day, not on the day actually to be honest at the moment we're simply not as good as them and that's where we've got to focus our minds.

"We have a little system of doing it here in the way that we schedule. We come in... everybody's a bit miserable, we're all a bit down, some of the guys are able to pick guys up and other guys just go round, they might not have performed well themselves, they might be worried about the fact that the need to pick themselves up and get better.

"But that morning is for review, so that is our four hours of catharsis and learning where we suck it up, we face down what we didn't quite get right, we acknowledge whether we weren't quite good enough or not and decide on the things that we're going to do to get better."