Nick Timoney urges Ulster to send message with winning display against Dragons

Ulster sit eighth in the table after defeat by the Ospreys last time out, clinging to hopes of making the end-of-season playoffs and qualifying for the European Champions Cup.

Despite a poor run of form which has only produced three wins in nine games in all competitions, Ireland backrow Timoney isn’t writing off Ulster’s title chances.

After a turbulent month on and off the pitch, Timoney is looking for a statement of intent in front of the home fans.

“I think it’s huge, it feels like every game is going to be massive but especially this week because obviously of the changes,” he said.

"We want to give the fans the sign that we still mean business and that we’re not taking it easy and not taking this as a transitional thing; we still think we can get back on course and that we’re contenders.

“It probably helps what Munster did last year. They were probably in a similar position at some point last season where they were not really firing on all cylinders and they brought it back and ended up winning the league from finishing fifth, and I think there’s nothing that suggests that we couldn’t do something similar this year.

“We’re excited to show the fans and get together as a club on Saturday to try and get this thing back on course and I think it’s more than doable.”

Timoney was shocked at the timing of McFarland’s exit from Ulster and felt his former head coach had built the province into a strong unit before a disappointing end to his tenure.

“’Hendy’ (Iain Henderson) sent a message round, he’d obviously been told to inform the players and we were just in Ireland camp, and yeah it was a bit of a shock and didn’t really see it coming at all if I’m honest,” Timoney said.

“It was the day before our down day from camp where we’d finish early on a Wednesday and be able to come back up, and we just had our meeting here with the players and spoke about it, so it was good timing from that point of view, but it was a bit of a shock.

“It was good to be able to come together as a group and set out our stall for what we want the next few months to look like anyway. There were some great times and not so great times obviously in the last few months and that’s the overriding feeling.

“But I think the end of ’18, ’19, ’20, ’21 – even ’22 – there were far more good times than bad times and I really felt like we were on the cusp of something special.

"[We] probably look back to that semi-final in 2022 in the league and if we’d won that – we conceded with the last play of the game and they scored the conversion – if we’d won that with a home final, I mean it could have been great.”

“It didn’t end the way anyone wanted it to and we wouldn’t have wanted to part ways mid-season and it all seems a bit turbulent, but there were some great times and he took us to some good places.

"It’s probably the strongest we’ve been for the last decade probably under Dan.”