Dan McFarland believes this is just the start of something for Ulster after watching his side come so close to a Champions Cup semi-final.
Still in his first season in the province's hot-seat, McFarland insisted after the 21-18 loss to holders Leinster at the Aviva Stadium that ultimately the better team won.
The stats didn't support his reading of it but he rightly pointed out that, once Ross Byrne kicked them into a three point lead in the 72nd minute, Leinster comfortably saw themselves into the last four.
“Look, we knew the size of the task in front of us," said McFarland. "It was going to be the toughest of tough tests.
“They are not double winners for nothing. We had it there for us and they snatched it away.
“We certainly didn't deserve to win. The deserved to win, but that's on the back of them squeezing the life out of us at the end."
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Asked if he'd love one more crack at the Blues in this year's PRO14 decider, McFarland replied: “Oh Jeez, yeah, that would be awesome. But I'm not going to get ahead of myself.”
Nevertheless when they pick themselves up from their disappointment - Jacob Stockdale, in particular, after what Shane Horgan called a "howler" of an error in the 45th minute when he failed to finish off a brilliant solo run - Ulster can take a lot from this defeat.
Skipper Rory Best could be gone for the season with an ankle injury but his colleagues produced their best performance yet under their new head coach.
"We've been working on this," McFarland said. "If you ask some of the players, a big turning point was Cardiff last year - they drew a line in the sand after that, and played magnificently at the end of last year.
"This year we're just building on that, perhaps with a few fresher and younger faces.
"You could look at this and see it's a huge game. But to me, it's just a step and we're just at the start of what I consider a long journey, hopefully to go a lot further."
The focus in the short-term will be on securing a play-off berth in the PRO14 behind runaway conference leaders Leinster. Currently second, Ulster are four points ahead of Treviso, but Benetton, Edinburgh and Scarlets remain in contention.
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"We have a quarter finalist (Glasgow) of Champions Cup next week, a quarter finalist (Edinburgh) the following week, then two weeks after that we have a semi-finalist (Leinster again)," said McFarland.
"People talk about other leagues in Europe. Forget that, our conference is where it's at - not even our league, our conference.
"It's tough going, but in terms of the support staff, we've been preparing for this.
"We knew it would arrive, that we'd roll off the back of this game into some really important games and so we planned for this two, three weeks back, and we know exactly how we're going to prepare.
"We’re going to have switch mindsets. We have to understand the level of the task in front of us and be totally focused on that.
"I’m hoping that the game, all it does is just wet the tastebuds for play-off rugby.
"We want to be consistently competing for championships, and before that you’ve got to be in the play-offs. We’ve got a tough task, but Jeez we’ll be hungry for it".
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