The truth was they should have left south Wales completely empty handed, as an inventive yet error-prone Llanelli failed to turn possession and a number of clear cut try scoring opportunities into points. In particular, Mark Jones and Barry Davies both knocked on ball as they were crossing the Ulster line in the firsthalf, and had their hands been a little more reliable, McCall's side would have been out of the game by halftime. "The bottom line was that we set out to win and we would have taken that result at the start of the game, " said Lllanelli captain, Simon Easterby, after the game. "But with the territory and possession we had in the first half we could have got a few more tries and the bonus point."

While Ulster struggled to match the Welsh side's general creativeness, they did hang in there grimly and with five minutes left on the clock and six points down, they could have snuck a try off a line-out maul. Instead, Llanelli flanker Gavin Thomas stole the ball at the breakdown and the threat was lifted, but had the visitors scored then it would have been completely unfair on the home side.

"It was a completely different match from last week's win over Toulouse, " said McCall, whose side have now lost nine of their past ten games in the Heineken Cup. "We felt an onslaught in the first 20 minutes and then we slowly turned things round. At half-time we felt there was a game to be won."

But the Ulster coach could see the wood for the trees.

"The group is going to go the whole way and there are a lot of points still to play for, " he said. "Llanelli have to play Toulouse twice. We have London Irish back-to-back and then the Scarlets come to Ravenhill."

Ulster's next Heineken Cup game, against London Irish at the Madejski Stadium on 9 December, now assumes vital importance. A defeat in Reading that afternoon and their dream of qualifying for the knockout stages will be all but over for another year. There's an awful lot of work to be done at Ravenhill over the next six weeks.