James Hume likely to miss Ulster's meeting with La Rochelle

Ulster centre James Hume looks likely to miss Saturday's crucial Heineken Champions Cup meeting with La Rochelle on Saturday, but the province are hopeful Iain Henderson and John Cooney could return at Kingspan Stadium.

Hume is following the graduated return-to-play protocols following a concussion in Sunday's 39-0 defeat to Sale Sharks, and with a six-day turnaround to the visit of the defending champions, it looks unlikely he'll be line out against Ronan O'Gara's side.

Henderson and Cooney are both also following the return-to-play protocols from incidents in the defeat to Leinster, but the province say they are tracking well ahead of Round 2.

Jacob Stockdale is a doubt for the weekend, with the wing currently being assessed for a leg injury.

While Ulster have lost just three games this season, they've found themselves in something of a mini-crisis in the last couple of weeks, with their second-half collapse against Leinster at the RDS followed up by a whitewash against Sale in the Champions Cup, the first time they had been held scoreless since 2008.

"We've got to own a 39-0 defeat, don't we?" McFarland said.

"It's very difficult when you're an honest group like these guys are. We measure ourselves by certain standards. We'll look at what we think we got wrong and have a good look at how we fix that.

"I'll come back to the point, it was a 39-0 defeat. We can play a lot better than that so we have to own that. We were bitterly disappointed with our performance."

And the Ulster boss (above) says he expects his side to rise to the challenge posed by La Rochelle.

"I'd rather be playing the European champions who put 40-odd points on Northampton in one half of rugby than playing a URC game.

"The challenge for us this week, and what