Dan Soper confident Ulster can overturn poor record in Europe

Ulster have only two wins from their last 10 games in European competition while this season the province has lost three out of four games, meaning they exited the Champions Cup and dropped into the secondary competition.

Under Dan McFarland’s tenure Ulster won four out of 14 knockout games.

Soper said: “This is almost different again for us because with Richie coming in there's a bit of a fresh start and things moving on.

“To shift the focus away from the league this week is quite nice, we haven't done as well as we would have liked when it comes to knockout games.

“We've done exceptionally well in terms of the league position; we haven't been able to finish the job in the knockouts. We've got a clear plan for the weekend and hopefully we can go about putting that on the pitch.

“We've played a lot of really good teams in Europe, that's what Europe's about – playing the best teams in Europe.”

Ulster travel to France with just one win in their last six games, including two defeats on the recent mini tour of South Africa.

Soper said: “We know South Africa is tough and Durban was really tough conditions. We probably let ourselves down in a few areas but the Stormers at the weekend, first half in particular we did a lot of things well, created a lot of opportunities.

“We're in the business of winning and if we're going to be that team, we needed to be further ahead at half-time because we had the lion's share of possession and territory.”

“We created quite a bit but that wasn't to be. Second half we couldn't get a foothold in the game, couldn't get any territory.”

Soper refused to comment on rumours that Steven Kitshoff will end his stay with Ulster early and return to his former club Stormers.

“I'm certainly not in a position to talk about that,” he said.

"I can talk about all the rugby you like but comings and goings of players is further up the food chain.”