Individuals hold the key, says Nick De Luca By DAVID FERGUSON Published on Thursday 26 April 2012 01:47 RUGBY may be a team game but it has been the ability of individuals to uncover their best form that has taken Edinburgh to the Heineken Cup semi-final according to centre Nick De Luca. De Luca should have taken his bow in Dublin's shiny new Aviva Stadium in February but suffered a hamstring strain in the build-up to Scotland's match with Ireland and was forced to withdraw just 20 minutes before kick-off. He heads off with the Edinburgh squad tomorrow morning shrugging aside any lingering pain of missing out and watching Scotland slump to defeat. He has also spoken of his personal anguish and culpability over yellow cards that cost Scotland in other games in the championship. This week, he envisages smashing Ulster runners back in the tackle and creating gaps with his pace and footwork to silence a big Irish crowd. De Luca's approach to rugby and life has not changed much in the past decade and he should know about individual performance because he is one in this Edinburgh side who, when on form, is capable of upsetting the brightest European talents. But he can also fall below thos standards on occasion, as witnessed in the RaboDirect PRO12 - and he is not alone. As far as strengths go, De Luca has a number of Scotland team-mates in the Edinburgh squad and others such as Fijian No 8 Netani Talei, Dutch wing Tim Visser, young full-back Tom Brown, De Luca's centre partner Matt Scott and locks Grant Gilchrist and Sean Cox offer different threats. The key to success against Ulster, De Luca believes, lies in those individuals finding top form again. "There have been huge individual performances in the Heineken Cup, which we just have not seen throughout the squad in the Rabo," he said. Netani especially has been inspirational for us and I just can't wait to see him play again this weekend. We don't want to be a team that just concentrates on the Heineken Cup and, personally, I am embarrassed about where we are sitting in the Rabo [second bottom]. But we have always competed in Europe, come close to winning games and won here and there. At the start of this campaign we got a bit of luck as well. London Irish missed a kick in the last play and [Juan Martin] Hernandez missed a drop-goal in the Racing Metro game here. They could have been two losses as easily as they were two wins but that gave us a bit of confidence and the knowledge that we could push on. That was the big difference. Usually, come round three or four of the Heineken Cup we are already chasing, already bottom of the group and saying that we need to win these next games to have any chance of staying in Europe. For once we were actually at the top, building momentum and it showed in performances and results. It has been a bit Jekyll and Hyde with the league - we seem to turn up in a completely different frame of mind for the Heineken games - I am just hoping the right guy turns up on Saturday. So is the whole of Scottish rugby, with people across the country riding a wave of optimism from Edinburgh's cup run and Glasgow's push for the play-offs in the RaboDirect PRO12. The Warriors could clinch their passage tomorrow night against Connacht but can Edinburgh reach the Heineken Cup Final? De Luca believes it is possible if the players can rise to international standards in front of 50,000 supporters in Dublin, which virtually all of the team have now experienced. "The build-up is very similar to an international," he said; "it is a huge game. If anything this is bigger because there is silverware on the line, whereas in the Six Nations we were just trying to get a win. This is a huge game in the history of Scottish rugby. But it is also fun because we are very close to getting something special out of this. We have had a great run of form in Europe and don't want it to end yet. There is individual pressure on us and we are putting pressure on each other - we are not going there to make up the numbers by any means. Publicly, I don't think anybody expects anything from us, but we do. De Luca dismisses league defeats to Ulster as irrelevant to this "one-off" match, though he would be happy if it allowed some complacency to creep into the Ulster psyche. But, while there is a confidence running through the Edinburgh camp as the Sky cameras and European eyes return to them, there appears also to be an acknowledgement that winning this game will be tougher than the quarter-final and Ulster will be better than Toulouse proved to be at Murrayfield. De Luca added: "Playing Toulouse was actually in our favour; a team that knows us inside out will be harder. Toulouse did not to do their homework, so Ulster, in my eyes, are a much tougher challenge. Toulouse did not play their best rugby and neither did we but we were good enough and this weekend we are going to have to be at 99 or 100 per cent to beat this side. We have to have a big start. That first ten minutes is going to be huge, and we have to make sure that we smash their big ball-carriers, their Wannenbergs, their Ferrises. We have to put them on the deck, look after the ball and play in the right areas; not give them easy points, easy scores so that the crowd can get up like it did against Munster. A few Toulouse fans seem to have booked early thinking they would rather go to that [the semi-final] than our game [quarter-final] so maybe they will be for us. I would hope there are enough Edinburgh supporters there that we can turn the tide and get the crowd behind us.