Connacht Team Talk Thread VI - Some like it TOH

There is a little bit of the headcase in him, thats true, but he doesn't get red cards, and the yellows he gets are usually team yellows for persistent offenses near the danger zone

He will give away penalties, but these are almost always because he's pushing the referee's interpretation of the breakdown, and he often learns and uses that knowledge to steal balls later in the game when the match is in the balance

His biggest weakness for me, is that he is quite a specialist player. He's really good at rucks and breakdowns, but he doesn't offer much in the way of ball carrying or linebreaks or the lineout. But his ball stealing ability absolutely benefits the team by keeping the other team honest. They have to resourse the ruck which opens up space for your attack

McCormack won't be in the academy next year. Contracting four natural 7s would be absurd. We also have Sean Masterson who has played 7 for us before, Paul Boyle who played 7 underage, and Ciaran Booth in the academy. We don't need Cloete (assuming Butler and McCormack sign new deals).

You're right

https://www.laws.worldrugby.org/?domain=9&guideline=16&language=EN

It's play-off Champions Cup, that's all matters.

If La Rochelle win in Glasgow, and we don't play it smart, it will be Leinster

If LaR do not win (or we play our game as I advise), Ulster or LaRochelle it should be, and we'd have a decent chance to go even further

Jesus you're some craic when it comes to Connacht these days Molloy. Through to knockouts for the first time in history in the champions cup, ran the English premiership leaders who have only a single defeat this season very close twice, and really should have beat them at the weekend.

And the best you can offer is to piss in everybody's cornflakes

Thanks for the replies. I suppose that wasn't really an option so, although in some cases when the scrum is being obliterated I'd say going down to 14 might actually be worth it.

Hopefully Finlay and Jack are not too badly injured, or we could be in serious tight head trouble.

Regarding the next round of Europe - while I agree it's good that we'll have a good sense for who our opponents might be given the different potential outcomes of the Stade game, I don't think I'd be trying to avoid Leinster necessarily. They'd probably beat us at home in Europe with basically the Ireland team......but what if they didn't? Dare to dream :-)

Re the booing, in the ground the replay on the big screen clearly looked like no try. Even Carty went back to the ref when he saw it again. And fans watching on tv at home have the benefit of the ref mic so they can hear the conversation, you don't have that in the ground. It was only later I saw a replay of the last ruck, which has me more annoyed.

Anyway, on to Paris. Stade can qualify with a BP win and if Wasps get nothing in Limerick, so they're likely to pick a strong team. But I think we can take them if we play like we did on Saturday.

Remember Leicester had no Dan Coles, Ben Youngs, George Ford and Julian Montoya.

So?

Leicester is the best team in Europe this season with Leinster and we had parity with them with the same, if not more, number of absence

Full-team Connacht are probably a really bad draw for anybody in round of 16

Tbh this is somewhat overstated. Those stats aren't up to date, BTW, but I think all their tries at the weekend came from the pretty conventional "pound away in the forwards then sling it out the backs" route? Connacht scored 4 tries but had the lowest metres made of ANY team in round 3, which is quite a feat given some of the other performances this weekend. They got a lot of kudos for "trying to play" against Munster while Munster were cursed from a height, but again their only try was from the back of a lineout maul. They didn't really create much.

They are a lot more of a meat and potatoes team than you would think.

I don't post or browse too often these days but I had the impression the last few posts I'd seen from you about Connacht were quite pessimistic, apologies if I'm mistaken.

This team is incrementally improving, and I agree with you about Friend, he's been a great find. At the end of the day Conncaht consistently punch well above their weight when comparing available resources, which is all we can ask as fans really.

A.Friend “You may well see a few new faces in there.”

Good, avoid Leinster

Test, Reintroduce and Rest

I'd go with

1) Tuimauga

2) Murphy

3) McCoy

4) Fafita'a

5) E.Masterson

6) D.Byrne

7) S.Masterson

8) Boyle

9) C.Reily

10) C.Fitz

11) O'Donnell

12) Bolton

13) Farrell

14) Kilgallen

15) McNulty

16) Heff

17) Duggan

18) Illo or McGrath

19) D.Murray

20) McCormack

21) Devine

22) C.Forde

23) O'Connor

(all verified listed in the European squad)