DON'T look back – or, perhaps, look back with pride. Sports psychology is becoming increasingly complex.
Ulster know they can't just forget last weekend's collapse away to 14-man Leinster. However, they have also had to quickly prepare for this Sunday's European Champions Cup opener away to Sale Sharks.
The defeat in Dublin might even have pained Skerries man Alan O'Connor more than most, as he made his Ulster debut a decade ago against his native province.
The 30-year-old didn't gloss over the pain felt in the Ulster camp after the RDS setback, saying: "You've got to take it personal, or else, you don't really care, do you? A lot of guys, myself included, we've all had good looks at ourselves and taken some good learnings.
"You've got to look forward because if you dwell too much on that… We've got three massive games coming up now, two European games and an Inter-pros straightaway, then Inter-pro after that. You've got to be able to learn quickly, got to be able to take what's happened for what it is and get better."
Heading to Salford to face the current second best team in England is the perfect fixture for Ulster to bounce back, O'Connor suggests: "Obviously after the loss last the weekend, we still take that hard - but the really easy way to get over a loss is to have a massive European game, and you can't afford to dwell on [the defeat]."
O'Connor did accept that Ulster might have some mental block about closing out games when they're on top, and that's something they have worked on, both individually and collectively, with Ulster's lead sports psychologist Darren Devany:
"We have Darren working with us now, he's full-time psychologist, and he was really helpful. With the forwards anyway, we spoke with him, we're trying to have that 'next play focus', 'next moment focus'.
"If things maybe are progressively getting worse, or bit more negative momentum, how do we get out of that? What do we do? Maybe we go to something that we're really good at, like set-piecewise, a line-out? Or maybe a maul or win a ball at the very front or something like that.
"Individually you have to think a bit more about how you get yourself out of that negative momentum stage."
The other aspect for Ulster to consider is how good they have been, and can be, as O'Connor acknowledges:
"We were saying that, whenever we play well we can beat anyone. It's just trying to keep that consistency throughout the board and throughout the game.
"We've blown a few teams out of the water in the first 40 minutes, 50 minutes this year. Then maybe the last couple of minutes they get the odd score. It maybe doesn't matter in the long run, in the grand scheme of things - but we want to be perfect, well, not perfect, but we want to be up there for the whole 80 minutes
"We know how we lost the game against Stormers in the 84th minute, so we need to be on it for the whole time, take every opportunity, even if the score-line doesn't matter, if they score in the last minute whenever we're up by 30 points."
Ulster won at Clermont, Northampton, and Toulouse in last season's Champions Cup, and thrashed Harlequins in the previous campaign, so there are no self-doubts on their travels, O'Connor confirms:
"We've done it so much recently… We beat Munster away for the first time in nine years…so we're no strangers to going away and getting big results. We have the game-plan to do that, we have the players and characters to do that as well. There's definitely no fear of going away from home anymore.
"You rock up, 15 v 15, 23 v 23, on a pitch. It does matter with the crowd and stuff but you definitely don't want to use that as an excuse."
And even last Saturday evening had positives amongst the ultimate negative: "We know how good we can be for parts of that Leinster game, which we were. So we'd be looking to bring some of that over there and look forward to all the confrontational challenges."
Look back, look forward – and look out, Sale.
