Mark Sexton was confident Ulster would rebound from 'freak' season after making switch from Connacht
Mark Sexton has revealed it wasn’t a gamble to swap Connacht for Ulster with the Ravenhill club challenging for silverware on two fronts this season.
Ulster are guaranteed home advantage in the European Challenge Cup after topping their pool while domestically in the United Rugby Championship, the squad are third with a game in hand over second-placed Glasgow and are top points-scorers in the tournament, which has been a stunning transformation from last season when the province finished 14th.
“Ulster have such a proud history and they had one blip, and the blip was very much… you look at the amount of guys that were injured last year, and you take away the injuries last year, and a couple of close games, and maybe they [would have been] ninth, eighth, seventh,” Sexton said.
“I thought last year was just a freak. I saw some of the individual backs, the athleticism of the backs; I had worked with Richie (Murphy) before – he's a brilliant coach – I worked with Jimmy (Duffy), worked with Willie (Faloon) before, now I’m working with Dan (Soper) and they're all brilliant coaches, so I knew we'd be in a good position.
“I didn't know we'd be third in the table and on top of the Challenge Cup, but we're happy where we're at, but we know we need to keep getting better as well.”
Sexton is hoping for a healthy Ulster representation in the Ireland Six Nations squad when Andy Farrell announces the squad on Wednesday afternoon.
“We'd love it if more guys got picked and if they don't, we've just got to keep getting better and we've got to keep winning,” he added.
"And just like Leinster do, Leinster have a knack of winning most weeks and that's why they have such a large representation, so if our numbers don't change, we're going to just have to keep on getting better.”
Ulster face bottom-of-the-table Scarlets in the URC on Saturday.
Sexton added: “Scarlets are a really good side, coached by two I know. The lads talk very highly of Peely (Dwayne Peel), they talk very highly of Jared Payne, so we're well aware of the threats that they have. They put it up to Northampton for 65 minutes.”