Ulster secured their biggest ever Heineken Cup win on French soil when they defeated Montpellier 25-8 on Saturday on a day that Andrew Trimble scored the only try, with Ruan Pienaar kicking 15 points and Paddy Jackson adding another five.

Coach Mark Anscombe said afterwards, “I’m enormously proud of the boys today, of the way we stuck to our game. We had talked about what we wanted to do and they did just that.

“The guys who started and the bench stuck to our plan. The defense was outstanding, we accumulated points, our kicking game was great and our chasing completed it to make it that way.

“To come here and beat them, and inflict their first home defeat this year, and by nearly 20 points -- it’s a pretty great occasion for our boys.

“A lot of our kicks were contested and we put them under pressure under those kicks, regained possession.

“That’s what you want to do. They have a big team and we wanted to turn them around, prevent them from getting some go forward. We didn’t want to give them early targets so they could put us on the back foot.

“We had looked at what we thought we needed to do. They have a massive back and good backs, so the key for us was not to give them some front-foot ball.

“We wanted to turn their big guys around, make them work hard, make them have to get back to do the work. It can be hard for the big boys to do that and that’s we achieved.”