I thought Illo and Dooley added a bit too. Blade needs to be dropped for a few games. Leadership still an issue.
A sign of a good team is when you win even if you play shìte.....this old clichè does not apply here....
Its just a sign that Connacht are shìte.....
I thought Smith played an important role as the game wore on. His chasing of the kicks helped get us field position. In a game where we were unable to get anything cohesive together that gave us what we desperately needed
It could be anecdotal but I feel like our record when we have extra players on the pitch must be pathetic?
I can remember a few instances where we failed to score against 13
Pathetic
You have to ask about the Wales setup. Will it end up like Scotland with only two teams. I know Connacht were brutal which just suggests how bad Cardiff was today at home
On the plus side we won and it would be pretty hard to ever play that badly again
I hate when people say things like this. You are just tempting the gods!!!
Would just like to correct grammatical issues with your post. Connacht as an entity is as such referred to as an 'is' and not an 'are'
Well let me correct you. It can be is or are. If he's talking about the players on the team and not the entity it's are.
Good man eagle eye. 🤔
I am just saying that the statement
should read
Its just a sign that Connacht is shìte.....
If you want your opinion taken seriously, it should at least be grammatically correct!
Who cares? Everyone knows what he means, arguing on grammar is the height of pedantry. It doesn't reflect well on you.
The only good thing was the 4 points.
The final play was one of the dumbest passages of play I've ever seen; great burst by Illo with the clock going red our options then are to play it fast and look to score, or slow it down and kick it out when the click goes red. What did we do? Slow it down just enough so we've lost all momentum then knock it on with a few seconds left on the clock. Clueless stuff.
Not a lot of positives but Murray and TOH were decent, Smith is still making some mistakes but you've got to love his work ethic and how much he gets involved, could grow into a really excellent player for us.
Hope Shane is OK because he took an awful blow to the head.
Thought Smith, Murray, Illo and Dooley were good. Very much going to forget that match and be happy with the first away win in Cardiff in 7 years.
Final thing is I never want to see Blade with the captaincy again. An absolute pathetic captains performance, rather than standing up and leading his team just whinging and throwing strops.
We really need proper leaders that be added to this group for them to take the next step. Hoped Joyce could be that.
100% agreed, I'm sure he's an important part of the leadership group but should be kept a mile away from referees. He's not good at managing the relationship and has had to be told to shut up a couple of times this year. Great player for us but the playacting and moaning is painful to watch at times.
I don't like having a scrum half as captain in general. A good scrum half has leeway to influence a referee lots without being captain. There's no benefit to combining that with formal captaincy.
Table prediction based on likely outcomes
Assuming Treviso, Stormers and Munster (slightly above in both level and easier schedule in theory), pull ahead
Connacht 51
Edinburgh 51
Ulster 50
Ospreys 49
Will be VERY close and this ugly win yesterday moved us from very unlikely to make it through to 50/50 for a Top8 position.
1st WE of March game to follow closely for Connacht, more than ours, is Embra vs Spreys. Losing part will make it a trio, 3 for 2 spots
Highly likely that one of Ulster,Munster and Connacht will not make it into a Top 8 Spot
Money would be on Ulster at the minute. Connacht still have 4 very winnable games.
I think is a wee bit, a little bit more likely Edinburgh and Ospreys are both dropped, schedules are harder
Irish provinces 6th, 7th, and 8th
hope so!
To be fair ospreys is the only decent Welsh team and it is rubbish
Connacht are a lot better than the performance on Saturday but history shows that they are likely to have a couple of away no-shows against the weaker teams. For all our moaning online the coaches were probably delighted to leave with a win for a change.
If the remaining fixtures go anywhere close to form the final top eight spots will be very tight. Connacht are in a great situation having made our away SA trip and played most of the stronger teams already, but I still have a nagging feeling that the Interpro in Thomond Park might become a must win game.
True but if we play like we did against Cardiff I think we are favorites to finish in 9th position
Definitely. We need to deliver bonus point wins with from Scarlets (H), Lions (H), Zebre (H), and Dragons (A). If we can do that then we'll likely just need to pick up one win across the harder games to get across the line. If we can't then maybe we really are a ninth place team.
Distribution of minutes so far this season, quite an even spread with a few mainstays and a few who are seemingly not rated and will presumably leave this summer (Burke, McCormack, and Cordero not shown). McElroy and Darragh Murray probably the big winners so far, while injuries and good performances have probably cleared a path for Andrew Smith to have a strong debut season.
Oh My God. What an awful match that was. Connacht nearly doing a Connacht on it and beating themselves. You can imagine the subs sitting on the bench thinking, I could do a better job than that. And most of them did, thankfully. I know the conditions were atrocious, but the attitude of the starting team seemed all wrong, nearly made worse by being a man, and then two, up. Bernard Jackman made some reference to the team doing a lot of S&C training rather than actual rugby over the break, maybe that contributed to it?
Anyway, it's great that we have a reliable penalty kicker now, though I'd still contend that Jack is a better 10 in open play.
I missed that comment from Jackman but it might make sense. After 13 consecutive game weekends then a holiday week the coaches may have needed to get some S&C workload into the squad. These post-RWC seasons are strange. They'll have been going from game to game all season trying to fix technical problems with limited training minutes.
Surely that would be more of a reason to work on the on field issues we could clear see over the last block?
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