Winger Rob Baloucoune is savouring the opportunity to play European knockout rugby in front of the Ravenhill faithful for the first time in four years after Ulster beat Stade Francais with a bonus point.

Ulster go into the sudden death phase of the Challenge Cup as one of the top three seeds and are guaranteed to have home advantage in the last 16 and the quarter finals.

Baloucoune was part of the last Ulster team to play any European knockout game on home soil - the Irish winger scored a hat-trick of tries in a first-leg victory in Toulouse in the last 16 in 2022 but only returned to Belfast with a six-point lead.

In the return, Antonie Dupont’s last-gasp converted try gave Toulouse one-point success on aggerate.

placeholder image — Robert Baloucoune scores a try for Ulster in the EPCR Challenge Cup success over Stade Francais. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

“It's definitely exciting, we've said it over the years of people coming across we've had a lot of big teams and we back ourselves at home,” said Baloucoune. “The support's great, you can really feel it in the stadium as well, you can hear the noise when you're on the pitch.

"It's really exciting, the fans will get behind the players and it'll be really exciting to be a part of.”

Baloucoune feels competition for places and the introduction of Mark Sexton as backs coach has helping Ulster challenge for silverware on two fronts.

“It's class, I mean we're all driving each other as well which makes it even better, it's healthy competition and I think you need that to really push forward, it makes all of us individually be at our best and as a team cohesively,” he said. “It’s class and the way we play as well, it's really exciting as a back three player trying to get tries and you can see that by the results here this year, this season.

"So it's class competition and we're all dragging each other on as well, so it's really healthy and it's really good.

“There's great buzz this year, you come into work and you can feel it from around all the boys and stuff and it'll be the same when we come in on Monday.

“We're a close group, we all back each other to do the best we can, we drive each other as well...as long as we're performing well, we're happy.

“Mark has been class since he came in, he's really put across what he wants from an attack point of view.

“As back three, it's definitely tough work but we all back ourselves as backs and try to get together, it's exciting for us, He comes up in training, he comes up in games as well.

"You can see that by the amount of scores we've had in the past few games and across the season, he's been a great coach coming in.”

Baloucoune scored a try and created another during the Stade victory and it was a timely remainder to Andy Farrell of his attacking capabilities as the Irish coach will announce his Six Nations Ireland squad on Wednesday. But, in another injury-hit season, the Ulster winger isn’t thinking about adding to his four international caps.

“I think it's a bit different for me just because of the amount of time that I was out last year, obviously it's always in the back of your head,” he said. “But for me just having a tough enough season last year, I'm just trying to get as many games as I can under my belt, as many training sessions as I can under my belt this year and if that leads to a call-up that's out of my hands...I'm just trying to play as well as I can and a team performance each game as well.”