Defence will be key says Dan McFarland

Four of Ulster’s current squad - Stuart McCloskey, Alan O’Connor, Sean Reidy and Rob Herring - were involved that day, but Toulouse have had a total rebuild, none of the 23 players on duty in the weekend win over La Rochelle played in the defeat five years ago.

Ulster coach Dan McFarland acknowledged that game will have little bearing on Sunday’s Heineken Cup quarter-final.

“We have chatted a bit about it and there were a lot of guys in the room who had played and won in Toulouse, it’s a different era now it’s five years later and we’re playing the French champions,” he said.

“As is wanton in the French league they rotate a lot of their players so they are a very different team to what they were back then and we can only focus on the team that is in front of us now and the style they are playing.

“It’s good to have the experience though, to have the experience of those guys who have played in the Champions Cup against big French opposition and know how to win games.”

If Ulster are to beat Toulouse McFarland feels the defence needs to tighten up after conceding 13 tries in their four games since the resumption, and especially as the French side can boast one of the best wingers in the world in Cheslin Kolbe.

The South African got a try in the World Cup final and has scored eight tries in 14 appearances for the Springboks.

“We’ve played Edinburgh, Leinster twice and Connacht in the first game and they are good scoring teams so we have come under the cosh a bit,” said the Ulster coach.

“We have definitely got to improve in that area, I think a lot of our defence, but we have had lapses some of them of set piece and some of them in our own 22.

“It is certainly something we need to improve and it will improve, it will need to get a lot better this week or we’ll be leaking a lot tries.”

Ulster have lost three of their four games since rugby returned but McFarland is expecting a different encounter against Toulouse.

“It does pose a big challenge for us, technically how you go about working the gain line against their style of carriers but also how we go about breaking down their defence,” he said.

“They have a lot of big guys and big guys tend to fill space well without actually needing that much width but they also have a really hard press defence on the edge which shuts down your runners.

“The off-load game is not something that we’ve necessarily faced since playing Connacht and these guys are a little bit different in terms of their off-load because their off-load is just by dominating you physically and big men being able to get their hands free, whereas with Connacht it’s more ball movement and swift feet.”

“There certainly are challenges and there’s challenges around the individual players they’ve got.

“Their nine (Antoine Dupont) is arguably the best nine in the world and their 10 (Romain Ntamack) is some player as well and in Cheslin Kolbe they’ve got a threat that everybody talks about so there is a lot of things there that we’ve got to focus on,” added McFarland.