Ulster skipper Iain Henderson aiming to end province's wait for silverware as they get set for Challenge Cup showdown against Montpellier

After dropping out of the European Champions Cup, Ulster travel to Montpellier for a clash in the last 16 of the Challenge Cup.

The skipper feels Ulster are good enough to win the competition but with only one win in their last six games and two wins in their last 10 European encounters, the odds aren’t stacked in the province’s favour for the Sunday lunch-time clash in France.

“I believe we have the right calibre of players individually, if I write down our best 23 to be involved on a match night, I think we're capable,” said the lock. “The way we're playing at the minute, I don't think we're there, we have a lot of hard work to do.

“Some players might think I'm being harsh but I'm pretty sure I could talk them round to agreeing with me.

“Silverware has eluded Ulster Rugby for my entire career and everyone's current playing career at Ulster.

“That's been a massive bugbear of mine so to be able to captain them to it would be one of the proudest moments of my career, if it were to happen.

“Where we are at the minute, we have to take it game by game.

“I'm not going to say we're going to go and win the Challenge Cup.

“Yes, it would be great and delightful to do that, but we’re not going to get ahead of ourselves. We have a lot of things that need fixing before we go making statements like that.”

Henderson knows what Ulster need to fix to start winning games in the near future.

He explained: “We need to sort our breakdown out. The Sharks came after our breakdown and more or less destroyed all of our set-piece plays in the first one or two phases.

"I think a lot of our breakdown comes from our attack shape where I feel in the last number of weeks we’ve made strides forward in that and we’ll fix a lot of those breakdown problems.

“Off the back of that, we’ll be able to play much smarter in terms of our territory when we’re able to hold onto the ball through a handful of phases.”

Ulster have only won four of their last 14 knock-out games but Henderson says he is “excited” to hopefully end that barren run.

“If I had the answer sitting here, I'd have implemented it many years ago,” reasoned Henderson. “I'm excited, I have the same buzz going into this one as I have going into past ones. I don't know if that's good or bad. I know the young guys who have been in this position before are champing at the bit to get another opportunity in knock-out rugby. That’s fantastic, their ambition and drive to be involved in knock-out rugby is brilliant, it's exciting.

“Richie has come in and we know there's a lot of work that's needed to be done. We've covered a lot in the last two weeks and there's a lot more to come. We're seeing massive strides session on session and if we see them coming out in the weeks ahead in European rugby, that'll be brilliant, and it'll be strides in the right direction for righting that record.”