ULSTER TRAVEL TO Toulouse today hoping to ride the wave of momentum arising from their 38 – 0 win over the four-time champs last week.

The problem facing them is not only one of the Top 14′s form teams though, it’s history.

Since winning the Heineken Cup in 1999, Ulster have travelled to France every season. Before finally gaining their first win with an 8 – 9 victory over Castres in 2013, their best result was the 35 – 35 draw in 2000 against, as it happens, Toulouse.

A repeat or improvement of that result today would keep Ulster’s hope of qualifying for the Champions Cup knock-out stages alive, but would also positively skew the historical trend a little further.  Since that scrappy win in Castres, Ulster have also gone away to Montpellier to claim an emphatic 8 – 25 win.

(That big massive blot at the end of their copybook is last year’s injury-plagued shoot-out with Toulon, let’s keep that out of the team-talk, Rory, yeah?)

Here’s the accompanying table of Ulster’s record in France this century.

Johnny Sexton and Robbie Keane played a few hands in Crumlin Children’s Hospital

‘We’ve to create a culture where it’s the norm to be honest about concussion’ — Kevin McLaughlin