James Hume hopes Ulster have put the “turmoil” of recent weeks behind them in Saturday night’s gutsy 16-10 win over Edinburgh in the United Rugby Championship.
A Robert Baloucoune try and resolute defensive display in the latter stages helped Dan McFarland’s men secure a crucial victory at the Dam Health Stadium.
Victory inflicted Edinburgh’s first ever defeat at their new home arena and guaranteed the Irish province a play-off spot with one game of the regular season to play.
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It also helped exorcise the recent memory of an agonising one point aggregate defeat to Toulouse in the last-16 of Europe and last week’s URC defeat to Munster in Belfast.
“It’s been a very tough few weeks since Toulouse and I’m not going to sugar coat it,” Hume told Premier Sports after his player of the match performance in Scotland.
“It may not have been fully addressed but you could just tell after the Toulouse game.. it was just so tough to take. We thought we were the better team and should have gone through.
“The ball was like a bar of soap out there and the forwards had an unbelievable effort to secure that at the end. It was great.
“It was just a huge effort. You saw the emotion at the end. The amount of turmoil and hurt we have gone through the past couple of weeks was summed up there.”
Ulster are next in action on May 20 when they welcome the Sharks to Belfast for the final fixture of the URC league campaign.
The South African club lies third in the table, a point above the Irish province in fifth, meaning a home quarter-final is up for grabs when the two meet in three weeks time.
“We’re on a week off now and to end with such a big effort from the boys, the spirits will be high coming back into the Sharks game which is huge,” said Hume.
“We’ve obviously secured play-off rugby and secured Europe for next season. It’s just now, can we get a home quarter?
“It will be very exciting to be back in front of our home crowd so hopefully we can put a shift in for them because last week (against Munster) wasn’t good enough.”
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