Connacht Team Talk Thread VI - Some like it TOH

Absolute pile that was. Friend has been overseeing the same weaknesses for years now, can't leave soon enough. We have far too much quality in our ranks to be serving up this s****.

How many leads have we given up I'm the last few years and did our best to do it today, Zebre just happened to be even worse than us

Except Friend isn't the day to day coach, and realistically the players can deliver in training and then stink the place out on the pitch regardless who is the coach. My issue is the Captaincy, there' a real lack of leadership out there. No-one with the consistent performance level or authority that Mul had, or a Craig Clarke. But someone needs to take on the role from Jack, and they need to be in the pack..

Joyce Captained a Bristol squad in friendly v SA A, don't hitnk he has any experience outside that. Has missed half the season so far with injury.

I'm a bit concerned by him as a signing frankly.

Signing announced way too early for a player of questionable quality, I'm not convinced he is the player that suits our game or will bring it to a different level.

I don't think he's a step up from Fifita, and a couple of steps behind Roux that left Connacht...

It's a fierce shame that we'll likely regret that loss against Newcastle away when it comes to Heineken Cup qualification at the end of the season. Not saying we would have won every match but the home advantage would've been a huge boost.

It was always about representation. I guess world soccer is much the same where geographic areas are provided qualifying spots into the World Cup. However what is different is that these geographic areas have their separate qualifying competitions. In the URC these geographic areas play in the same qualifying competition.

As such I agree with you connachta that this representative structure makes no sense and the grouping of Scottish and Italian teams just highlights this even more

Thanks. But still unclear.

Do you mean the rule is unfair to Connacht TO THE EXTENT that, if Cardiff win Challenge Cup and qualify through that, Scarlets or Ospreys would qualify even lower in the table (instead of us)?

No that won't happen, (@[Deleted User] is totally correct), for example, if a team were to win the Challenge Cup, and their geographical Shield, and finishes in a high enough league position to qualify, (at the moment I believe Glasgow may achieve this by the way), all three of those achievements are just for that team, they do not transfer or confer any rights to another team to qualify. The only effect is that there would be extra places out of the 8 leftover to be given to teams by virtue of their league finishing position.

In other words there are a number of ways to qualify and teams can achieve more than one, and the only result from that is that there would be more places left to be decided by league position.

Say for example the first 4 teams are always the shield winners, we know those teams before the playoffs, they are locked in by that stage as HCC qualifiers.

After that there are only 4 more places left to be decided.

From that point on, the 4 highest placed league teams (that aren't shield winners) will also qualify except for the circumstances where a lower placed team wins the URC, HCC or CC to gain qualification.

e.g. (extrapolating from the current league standings) 4xSW (e.g. Leinster, Stormers, Glasgow, Cardiff), 1xURCW (e.g. Stormers), 1xHCCW (e.g. Leinster), 1xCCW (e.g. Glasgow), in this scenario all three champions would have won their geographical Shield, and also all three would have finished with a decent enough league position to expect to qualify that way as well (all are top 4 presently), so after taking those 4 teams that would have qualified out of the 8 places available, there would be 4 places leftover for the other teams, and which other 4 teams would qualify would be determined by their final league position (or final league standing to use the URC terminology). At present that's looking like Ulster, Munster, Bulls and Sharks. While Connacht are in 8th position presently, Cardiff would take the qualification position from Connacht by dint of winning the Welsh Shield (this system is up for review at the end of this season, however the only article I could find mentioned the word unanimous, so maybe all Unions would have to agree to change it, and Wales definitely wouldn't agree at the moment as they've benefitted now two years in a row).

(SW = Shield Winners, URCW = United Rugby Championship Winner, HCCW = Heineken Champions Cup Winner, CCW = Challenge Cup Winner)

Just to add an extreme example out of interest, in any given year, if two of the shield were particularly poor, let's say the Irish and South African shield are better than the other two and their 8 teams occupy the top 8 spots,

and let's say for example Glasgow were in the bottom half of the table below Edinburgh yet managed to win the Champions Cup, and Benetton were below Edinburgh also and managed to win the Challenge Cup, then there would be a situation where two shield winners plus the HCC and CC winners were all outside of the top 8, then lets' say Connacht were 8th in the league but won the URC and qualification. To add a twist, if the Shield winner of one of the two Irish or South African Shield were outside the top 3 then they would take the qualifying place from the 3rd ranked team. There could even be the case that the team that made the final would not qualify, if they weren't in the top 2. It is extremely unlikely though but an interesting musing.

The bad news about Wilkins is confirmed. He's now officially Head Coach next season.

Christ lads. Imagine how depressing this alleged "recruitment process" must've been if Wilkins fails upwards again to the top job permanently.

Since taking over as head coach, we have a winning record despite completely restructuring the coaching ticket extremely close to the start of the season. All while blooding the young players who will hopefully be the backbone of the province for years to come, and improving our defence hugely from the mess of 21/22. Imo we are winning the games we should win, and suffering from having probably the toughest fixture list in the URC. We are about where we should be considering our playing pool, budget, etc. As the likes of the Murrays, Cathal Forde, etc. enter their mid to late twenties I hope we can become a top 4/6 team again, but we are not there yet.

We do definitely need to get the rest of our coaching appointments right, especially Senekaal's replacement. Overall I'm cautiously optimistic.