AHEAD OF tomorrow’s Challenge Cup last 16 game at Montpellier, Ulster skipper Iain Henderson believes that the troubled province have some distance to travel if they are to make inroads on being contenders to win titles.
“Silverware has eluded Ulster Rugby for my entire career and everyone’s current playing career at Ulster,” said the 81-times capped Ireland lock.
“That’s been a massive bugbear of mine. 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 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.
“I believe we have the right calibre of players individually,” the two-time British and Irish Lions tourist stated, “and if I write down our best 23 to be involved on a match night, I think we’re capable.
“(But) The way we’re playing at the minute, I don’t think we’re there,” the 32-year-old added.
“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.”
With much turbulence having recently enveloped the province in terms of on and off-field issues — poor form plus the removal of head coach Dan McFarland, CEO Jonny Petrie and an impeding reduction in squad size with even marquee signing Steven Kitshoff rumoured to be exiting — long serving Henderson praised interim head coach Richie Murphy’s impact since arriving.
“Richie has come in with new ideas and a new way of putting things across, he’s not trying to rip everything out, he’s coming in and having a look.
“He has an eye on a lot of the provinces being Ireland U20s coach, he would look at a lot of our games and the young guys coming through, so he had been looking at us before and he has said: ‘I don’t think we’re far away here but there are a lot of things really need straightening out.’
“Consistency is another point Richie has raised,” Henderson said.
“We did beat Leinster this year, but Leinster are a much better team than we are because they can string performances together consistently throughout a whole season.
“That’s somewhere we need to strive to get to.”