Iain Henderson hopes Ulster can deliver final piece in jigsaw

Ulster reached the Pro14 final and the last eight in European but suffered heavy defeats in both knock out games.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve sat after a knockout rugby game and said next year we are going to learn from this, my main takeaway from this and my main takeaway from the team is that this team works hard for each other and we are going to work hard for each other until we find a way,” said the Ireland lock.

“I thought I would have learned from it when I lost in 2013 in the final and other semis and quarters we have lost in and we are certainly not going to give up trying to win one.

“We are getting better as a team there is no doubt about that, but every other team is getting better, Toulouse and Leinster they just didn’t peak in 2014/15 and level out they are constantly getting better too.

“It is about the rate at which we can get better and I think over the last two seasons we have accelerated loads and really going after.

“We have maybe slowed a bit in getting better and we have to make sure we can continue to make up that ground and that distance between us and the opposition teams.

“I hope it is just the last we click and all those pieces will fall in together really nicely, as a squad we are committed to not stop trying until they all do click in.

“We don’t know how we are going to do it but we’ll take our learnings and we have done that before but we are not going to stop working until we get better.”

Henderson felt the disrupted season hindered Ulster.

He said: “I think in every facet of life lockdown has messed something up for somebody along the way. We did so much together over video media channels, we did a lot of homework in the time we were apart from each other however that is not playing rugby and you need to play rugby together to continue the momentum we might have had and we almost certainly have not done ourselves justice.

“If you had said to me after our last pool game and you lose the quarter final (36-8) by the score we did I’d have been more disappointed than I am now.”

With a promising group of young players starting to emerge Henderson thinks Ulster can finally end their 14 year wait for silverware.

“These young lads are some of the most professional in our squad and I have no qualms in saying it, they are far more professional that I was at their age,” he said.

“It is so promising to see them young guys coming in Michael (Lowry), James (Hume), Tom O’Toole and Rob Lyttle, there is a half dozen of them in there that are working really hard and it is great to see them pushing the older guys for places,

“They are doing it in training day in and day out and they are doing it with a professionalism and a confidence and I think the guys are genuinely amazed by it.”