Gloucester lost their opening match in a Heineken Cup tournament for the first time when they went down 39-31 in the French capital to Stade Francais Paris on Saturday. But their French international hooker Olivier Azam is confident they can bounce back and mount a serious Pool 6 challenge.
"I think that, on our day, we can beat any Heineken Cup team home or away - we proved that with our first half performance against Stade," said Azam, who will have an x-ray examination on an injured finger to see if he is fit to play.
"That said, it is clear that looking forward from this defeat to our game against Ulster at Kingsholm on Saturday that we have lots of work to do to meet that challenge.
"We made too many unforced errors and also missed out on two tries which cost us the match.
"Although Gloucester do not have as many big names as teams like Stade we work very well together as a team and we have lots of potential.
"However, our inconsistency and inability to shut out teams is worrying. We keep letting people off the hook with unforced errors and poor defence.
"For me it is going to be very important not only to be fit for next week's game but also that I am able to participate as much as possible in the preparation so that we can try and reduce the level of errors we made in Paris.
"I don't know much about Ulster as a team but we will be spending a lot of time this week watching tapes and learning as much as we can about their style.
"But, as an Irish team, they are bound to be very proud and passionate and very tough to beat. We certainly are looking at another very hard match and we want to make up for the opening round disappointment and ensure we play our next 80 minutes at the level we played the first 40 against Stade."