Rob Herring major doubt for Ireland's Six Nations campaign

Rob Herring is rated as highly unlikely to feature in Ireland's Six Nations campaign after the Ulster hooker suffered an arm injury in training.

Andy Farrell will name his training squad on Wednesday for the tournament, which begins against France on 2 February.

The 33-year-old, who has 39 Ireland caps, may need surgery.

"I suspect his prospects for the Six Nations are not great for the moment," head coach Dan McFarland told RTÉ Sport after Ulster's 48-24 Investec Champions Cup loss to Toulouse.

"He hasn’t seen the surgeon yet but I suspect he will need a procedure on that. It was innocuous tackle in training."

Herring’s team-mate Tom Stewart (below), who scored Ulster’s first try against the French side, may come into the reckoning, alongside regulars Dan Sheehan and Ronán Kelleher of Leinster.

Speaking about the seven-try defeat, their second loss of the campaign, McFarland said: "We have to face the fact that they are a really good team.

"It’s a pleasure to be able to play against teams of that quality in this competition but I also think that at stages tonight we certainly didn’t help ourselves.

"They were superb at capitalising on our mistakes. Against a team like Toulouse, you’ve got to be crisp and clean and fair play to them.

"I was really pleased with the way we got into the momentum of the game and scored a couple of tries at the end of the second half that put us in a position that we could have got a bonus point.

"We just couldn’t quite finish it off.

"It’s a disappointing changing room down there but that’s professional sport. You are going to lose games. Even Toulouse lose games here and there."