Nick Timoney doesn't feel Connacht are becoming Ulster's nemesis despite recent success

Dan McFarland’s side led 20-3 at one stage in the second-half of their November meeting at the Sportsground before the westerners scored 19 unanswered points to take the win.

The teams meet in Belfast tomorrow night in a crucial United Rugby Championship game with Ulster sitting seventh in the table – a point and place ahead of their Irish rivals.

“You could say all the provinces in some ways are because we play them more often, so we beat them or lose to them more often,” said Timoney. “It can feel that way as we’ve lost the last two, but the record is pretty 50/50.

"We’ve lost to them a couple of times over the last few years, but we’ve also beaten them away a couple of times. Mostly in other years the home team has won a lot of the games.

"To me, it seems pretty evenly matched and it’s one of those ones where whoever shows up on Friday night is going to win, I think.

“That’s pretty obvious, but both teams are going to come with all guns blazing and I certainly don’t think there is anything in particular that makes them harder for us to play against than any other team.

“They’re just a good team and they’ve got the better of us a few times over the years, but we’ve done the same. We’ll see how it goes.”

One of the areas Connacht have had success in across the last two meetings is the battle of the breakdown and Timoney believes it will be no different tomorrow night, but Ulster can take confidence from nullifying Cameron Woki and Syia Kolisi in last week’s win over Racing 92.

“I think Connacht’s back-row – I know they’re not maybe winning the World Cup – but certainly their impact in the league, I don’t know the stats, but they seem like they’re one of the most productive back-rows in the league,” he added. “Every game they play they seem to have a large impact on so it’s certainly a huge challenge for us, but one we’re pretty familiar with as well.

“That seems to be a large part of their game plan. You could see it in the Saracens game at the weekend and every time we play them as well.

"They pick back rows who want to chase breakdowns and they want to give them license to go and attack our ball a lot of the time so we have to be on it.

"It’s not necessarily a case of changing tactics or doing things that differently, it’s more a case of just being on our game and being switched on and making sure we’re recognising those threats because they have them all over the park as well.

“You see some of their outside backs getting turnovers at the breakdown on the weekend as well so a huge challenge and if they can get access to the game through that it’s going to be beneficial to them.

"At the same time, if we can nullify their breakdown threat it will go a long towards us hopefully getting a win.”