'Gutsy' win pleases McFarland as Ulster do double over URC and Top14 leaders

Crisis. What crisis?

In the space of three weeks, Ulster have beaten the Top14 and United Rugby Championship leaders.

Sandwiched in between was another hard-fought derby victory over Connacht, and Ulster can now say with a fair degree of confidence that they have put three demoralising defeats in a row to Glasgow Edinburgh and Bath firmly behind them.

The New Year's Day URC victory over Leinster, allied to the Champions Cup win over Racing 92, may herald a new dawn.

"I’m very happy, it is the best challenge in the URC coming to Leinster and to come away with a victory and the manner of it is very pleasing," said Dan McFarland (above) after the 22-21 win.

"I suppose the Racing one was a better game to watch from a move the ball around the park [point of view].

"That [win tonight] was probably quite exciting, gutsy.

"To me that was a really gutsy performance from us interspered with three brilliant tries.

"We took our points when we needed to take them. The rest of it was clench your teeth, get down in the trenches and do the work that you have to do. That's still a victory isn't it."

Ulster scored three first-half tries, all off the back of clever kicks from man of the match Billy Burns (above), as the visitors, beaten here last season after blowing a sizeable lead, outsmarted Leinster’s defence time and again.

"I don’t think that it is new knowledge," he replied when asked if their rush defence was picked out as a possible weakness.

"If you play the kind of defence that Leinster are going to play this year, they are susceptible to kicking.

"There was some high quality and accurate kicking, Billy is one of the best in the game at that; I genuinely mean that.

"Yeah definitely, it was a plan but you have to have variety in that, be able