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 to do it different ways and not be obvious.
"Setting it up and planning it is difficult but those guys understand that. They have to execute it well. There was certainly one of them [tries] which Billy was smart, understood where our players were going to be and out the ball there, even when it is not structured."
The win brings Ulster up to fourth place in the table, while Leinster remain top, two points clear of Benetton.
On his team’s defence, head coach Leo Cullen (above), who made 14 changes to the team that beat Munster, said: "They did create some space for sure, but I thought we had a lot of pressure on in different stages.
"It’s disappointing the way we started the game, that’s probably the thing. Again, we just need to be a little bit sharper in terms of seeing some of those pictures as well.
"We’ve plenty to work on. We’ve chopped and changed our team a bit as well, you’re trying to build that cohesion part and listen, I have to take responsibility for that.
"I thought we would be good enough, I thought we had chances to win the game, but unfortunately, we just weren’t quite good enough."
Leinster are next in action in round three of the Champions Cup against Stade Francais at the Aviva Stadium on 13 January, while Ulster host Toulouse on the same date.
