Les Kiss hopeful Ulster can banish travel sickness

Ulster’s Director of Rugby Les Kiss is aware that it will take a monumental turnaround in form, attitude and finishing ability to put one over on Exeter in their own back yard on Sunday and proceed through to the Champions Cup play-offs.

Ulster have lost seven of their last 12 games and inconsistency is the the bane of the squad, but Kiss still believes that Ulster are ready to turn their season around starting with the difficult Pool 5 must-win clash against the Chiefs.

To have any chance of making it through to the last eight as one of the best runners-up, Ulster must complete the double over Exeter, and then get a bonus-point home win over Bordeaux next week. A narrow defeat by Scarlets last week in a game they should have won, provoked some tough talking.

“You can sense things in the camp this week that we had to get back on the horse again. To the guys’ credit, they haven’t lamented the Scarlets defeat too much, or over the decisions, referee’s and our own. They were costly, but you got to move on and to be fair, they have been very good at that this week.

“It was a searching week and I’m sure everyone can understand why. It was not the result we wanted. If we had of been a little bit more clinical in the second half, you could have taken the penalty try decision out of the equation. But we have to live with it and we have to make sure we can turn that around, particularly as our away form has not been good,” said Kiss who has overseen six defeats on the road and only two successes.

Those poor performances have attracted severe criticisms, as Kiss is well aware.

“You are going to have opinion around the edges, and I understand why. But you cannot sit and be precious about it. You have to stand in front of the criticism in its varying forms and the feedback and deal with it. We constantly put ourselves under pressure in the changing rooms and on the training pitch, but you have to take that external pressure as well,” explained Kiss, who knows that Sandy Park is a bear pit for teams trying to execute a victory over Exeter.

“It won’t be easy playing against the number three side in the Premiership. They are a well-resourced team, they are going well, and against Bordeaux last time, they did a really good job. So they are a team to reckon with. It’s difficult to face them with our current away form. But in a way that’s ideal, you want a big challenge, and this is it,” said Kiss, having won their last five games in the Premiership. “Certainly, at the start of the season, by their own reckoning they were not where they really wanted to be.

“But you can see how they’ve recovered from those situations and have now put themselves firmly in the picture. They were not getting the return from their strong maul earlier, since then they have great success.

“So they have their strength back, and personnel back, like Henry Slade, Jack Nowell and Thomas Waldrom is on fire. So they have got some pretty big players doing great things for them at present. They are going to be a really tough task.”