Winning silverware with Ulster would be 'massive' says Ireland winger Jacob Stockdale

The Ireland winger made his Ulster debut a decade ago and with the likes of Rob Herring, Stuart McCloskey and Iain Henderson is among a generation of players that have never won anything with the Ravenhill club.

However, they are three victories away in the European Challenge Cup from ending the province’s 20-year trophy drought and face La Rochelle in a quarter-final clash at Ravenhill on Friday night.

“I think it would be massive, this is a very special place,” said Stockdale. “I know the other lads as well, but I've certainly enjoyed playing here for the last 10 years or so. It would be lovely to be able to repay fans' dedication to us over the last number of years with some form of silverware.

“I think these are the moments where you can't get carried away with yourself, we can start looking beyond. And what we really need to do now is just focus on fighting on.

“I know it's a massive cliché, we're not looking at it like that, we're looking at it like we just need to get through this (La Rochelle) game.

“We need to just come away with a win at the weekend and then we can look beyond that after this week, so yeah, it's an exciting place to be. We do feel like we've played very well to be in this position. And even in the league as well,” he added.

“We're sitting in a position where we can be really genuinely competing for silverware at the end of it and that's where we want to be, and where we haven't been for the last couple of years.”

Despite not knowing what side La Rochelle will bring after a number of their big names missed the last 16 win at Newcastle, Stockdale is expecting a different challenge from the one posed by the Ospreys last weekend.

“I think every team has some form of an identity, it doesn't matter who's on the pitch,” he continued. “Obviously, there's certain players that are very good at particular things in the game but as a whole, you look for general patterns as to what they're trying to do as a team, so that's what we can do. We have no idea who they're going to send over, that's how we've been analysing it.

“They're a very different team to Ospreys, they just don't go away.

“Ospreys have a number of massive poachers across the game, La Rochelle are a very dangerous attacking side.

“You saw that in the way that they played against Newcastle. I don't think the weather there was particularly good either and they were still able to put together some really nice tries.

“I suppose their biggest threat is their offloading game, and that's what you have to do against them, you just need to stay alive and expect literally anything in defence,” said Stockdale.

“La Rochelle represent a very big challenge. They've consistently been one of the best teams in Europe over the last couple of years so we're excited about that challenge.”