Marcus Rea says Ulster need four wins to reach United Rugby Championship playoffs

In one of the tightest races to reach the quarter-finals, only three points separates fifth to 11th in the table.

Ulster are 10th despite picking up a win against Cardiff last week and welcome fifth-placed Benetton at Kingspan Stadium on Friday night.

European Champions Cup qualification is also up for grabs and while normally a top-eight finish would suffice, if the Sharks win the Challenge Cup they would receive one of the URC places next season.

The Durban side are currently 13th and mathematically can’t make the top-eight, meaning Ulster would have to finish at least seventh or miss out on Champions Cup rugby for the first time in their history should the Sharks lift the trophy at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

“It is tough because we knew from the start of the season and even from Christmas time that we needed to win games,” Rea said.

“I think mentally it is week by week. We had to dig deep in that Cardiff game and I think that was something that was beneficial to us. We may not have played our best rugby but at least we had to fight and show that we had the fight, and that is going to be imperative when we come to Benetton – that we have that fight there and we know that we can do it and we can dip into it when we need to.

“You can’t really rely on or trust anyone else. If we don’t get wins it doesn’t matter what other people do so we have to focus on ourselves, and the wins are imperative to us,” he added.

“What else goes on whether people pick up bonus points or slip ahead of us, that is out of our control, it is just keeping the blinkers on, looking at ourselves, reviewing and sort of getting better every week.

“We want to play in Europe every year and that is somewhere we believe we should be. It is what we have been doing – we really haven’t dipped into that Challenge Cup territory for a while.

“Whether we have the tools in the box to get over the line to lift silverware or not is up in the air but we’ll definitely be looking for that top eight.”

Ulster’s breakdown work and high number of turnovers conceded in the last few games has been a big concern and Rea knows these are two areas that Benetton will fully put to the test.

“A large proportion of it is the backrow but there are sort of instances where we get caught when maybe we have not been in system and we have had to play out of the system, and someone has went by themselves and people are maybe thinking that it isn’t their ruck,” he said.

“In my opinion we’d be better playing out of shape with the ball in shape without it.”

“With (Michele) Lamaro there and a few of the other guys, they’re outside backs as well we have to be on the ball, we need to get quick ball for our backs.

“That is something that we thrive off and something that we have been aiming at for a lot of the year.”