Mark Anscombe has praised his players for their progression to the knock out stages of the Heineken Cup, but he has urged them to go one further and secure a home quarter final, as a reward to fans for their continued support.
Ahead of the round six clash with Castres Olympique, he said: “It's a credit to the guys that they have achieved that. They've achieved a lot of good things this year. But we set out a goal to get a home quarter final, so we’re certainly not resting on our laurels and we’re going to Castres with a job at hand. We want to reward our fans and people with a home quarter final and I'd we don't do that I feel we will have let ourselves and the supporters down.”
Anscombe admits his side faces a difficult task at Stade Pierre-Antonine, against a team in fourth place in the Top 14. “Like a lot of French teams, they are very strong at home and have only lost one game at home this year. From what we’ve seen of them this year and the way they played in the first round, they have a formidable forward pack. We know where our work is going to be at next week and if we don't front up then it’s going to be a long day,” he said.
“We've put ourselves in a good position and we have to make sure we go there and don't relax thinking we've made the quarters. I think if we go there and don't perform next week it's a little bit of a setback. Yes we've ticked a box and qualified at the top of the pool, but we want a home quarter final, simple as that.”
With many permutations with regards home quarter finals, Ulster centre Darren Cave believes the best thing to do is for the team to focus on winning their match and forget about results elsewhere.
“Well the beauty of the Heineken Cup is that you can sit there with a calculator all day and worry about where you're going to be, but from my perspective this rugby team just wants to win matches, so a home quarter final would be brilliant but the bottom line is that we want to win matches.”
We haven't won in France before in a competitive match so it's going to be a tough one but it’s one we are looking to win. We did it at the start of the season with a pre-season win over Bayonne so there’s no reason why we can’t do it again.”
