Sticking to the positives… Michael Lowry insists Ulster are on the verge of turning fine margins in their favour

Three games, two in the Champions Cup up against Toulouse and Harlequins and then last weekend in the undercard competition at Clermont, a knockout match but where the hosts put 53 points on the board.

Horrible. really. and what was seen in the second-half at Stade Marcel-Michelin only added to the belief that Ulster’s on-field difficulties are some distance away from resolution never mind recovery.

So, not exactly the appropriate backcloth for the return to URC action and with Ulster having registered only the two victories from their last eight fixtures — albeit spread across European ventures and the league — they now urgently need to find a winning formula to improve on eighth in the table.

“The results look that way,” says Lowry of how tricky the defeats, big or small, can be to process, “but it’s little moments in a game change that game.

“If we’re winning that moment and not losing a small moment in the game, it makes a massive difference.”

And deploying what happened at Clermont, he maintains that things might have turned out differently had Ulster won a particular moment near the end of the opening half.

“You know, there was maybe a moment when we had Clermont trapped at 13-7 with five minutes to go in their own 22 and instead (Alivereti) Raka makes a break right through the middle.

“These are the little things that we know we’re so close.

“If we get that right and we get a penalty or something and trap them in there, we could have gone into the lead at half-time and not be chasing the game.

“So, little things are massive momentum swings, especially when you’re in the likes of Clermont’s stadium or against the likes of Toulouse.

“Once they feel like they’re getting ahead of you and they’ve got momentum, they’re a difficult beast to stop.”

He continues with the theme but then what else can he do?

The win in Montpellier, which Lowry missed due to concussion, came gift-wrapped thanks to one red and two yellows — the third hardly being relevant right at the death — and was therefore hardly the stuff of corners having been turned under Richie Murphy.

And any notion that significant progress had been made then were clearly trashed a week later at Clermont.

“We’re not that far away,” Lowry insists, a statement which has been said by others before during this challenging campaign.

“It is those little moments that we’re just not winning and not being in the game for a full 80 minutes and being really switched on.

“Little switch off moments have hurt us and that’s when we struggle to get back.

“We know we can be switched on and, all the detail stuff, we’re still working on it but we’re getting better at it.

“It is just winning those little battles and putting that in a full 80-minute performance.

“Sometimes if you’re not working hard enough, that’s when you can switch off a bit and it could be a 10-second period where someone or a couple of lads switch off and don’t help each other, or talk to each other on the run, and that’s what can lose that little moment and it’s a massive swing.”

Well, yes, such are the margins at this level of the game.

After four challenging away matches — two in South Africa and then the same number in France albeit with one positive outcome at an imploding Montpellier — facing Cardiff at Ravenhill appears to offer the province the prospect of a much-required result to take forward towards the remaining rounds of action.

It can’t have been easy for Lowry either, being moved around between full back and wing — he starts on Friday on the right flank after three recent starts on the opposite side of the pitch — and having to do more firefighting in both roles rather than focusing on his primary strengths of running and hitting space.

“Despite the size of me, I really enjoy tackling,” the 25-year-old says in recognition of the recent workload.

“The thing with the back three is that we all work together and sometimes I’ll end up at full back anyway.

“Rugby now is not like you just stand on the wing, you get yourself in at first or second receiver and that’s the way I want to play but it’s very interchanging wherever you play now, and you can find centres on the wing at stages now,” adds Lowry, who makes his 98th appearance on Friday.

“We’re all driven to go and finish well,” states the Ireland international regarding both the fixture list and current situation in the table.

“Results don’t show that, but everyone wants to get better, and we can already see the improvements.

“Every season it’s always important to finish on a high but we’re constantly improving as players, and we feel the team is going in the right direction.”

The hope is that Lowry is accurate in his summation for anything less than a successful bid to head in a more northerly direction in the table could easily render this season one not only of crisis but also of collapse.

For Lowry, the only pragmatic thing to do is to keep sounding upbeat.

“I definitely think our attack shape is looking better,” he says, “even things we’re picking up in training, not going into detail of it, but like the attacking shape is getting there.

“Richie has come in with a lot on his plate and a four-week period to do anything is not a very long period at all.

“For us as players, we take responsibility for that but ultimately it can take time to really to get to where we want to be and buy into what he wants.”

Time is fine but, with four regular season games after Friday, it is also running out on this season and Ulster need to demonstrate that they are at least on some form of upslope.