Connacht Team Talk Thread VI - Some like it TOH

Its a difficult sell to pay hard earned money to attend the SG this and last season ,exposed to the elements (behind the goals) and watch the same gameplan every week leading to the same results each week, never mind watching them on TV.

It must be asked - are the guys from academy(ready firstly)& the less expensive option than buying in cover?

They gave the crowd nothing to cheer hence less and less turned up.

can only go upwards from here!

Sorry forgot to post this:

https://all.rugby/transfers/connacht

Mc Burney, Smith and Porch left…

Porch started 5 TOP 14 games in France and racked up 400 min by end of season. HE played on a side that beat Toulon and lost to a La Rochelle side by 1 point. He was treated pretty bad by Wilkins… Really deserves to be picked up.

Smith did the same, found any place else to be than in Connacht cause he was in the fridge in Connacht.. Played in two champions cup games and got a renewal..

Lasisi is 24 which is young for a prop and doesn't have international like Finlay giving up time while on International duty…

McCormack is the question when you consider Oliver isn't back for next season… Oliver is generally a 1000 min a season guy, SHL was eating into that but he still racked up 600 min while being int he fridge for 6 months last season. Mc Cormack has take up that slack, SHL doesn't go on internationals so he will have to fight for every minute..

Reilly is a really good rugby player in Connacht's most competitive area… He is on a long term injury (I think). Say he is retained because Connacht don't think they are keeping all their SHs… Devine and Murphy in the one club considering age profile and ambitions doesn't make sense….

Connacht must keep Devine because he is excellent tackler as same as Dupont and Connacht-grown. And I expect three new comers this year (Treacy, West, J.Devine). Especially West, If escaped nasty injury, I think he would appeared in senior match already because he has some good rugby sense like Treacy.

With only 2 full-time out-halves, I'd imagine there will be time for others this season through injury or rotation.

Is Hawkshaw still an out-half these days or has that ship sailed?

Very fair points.. I still annoyed about Farrell, could see that all he needed was a small bit of luck on injury… I have the same feeling about Smith, think he is going to mature very well..

Porch is annoying as we kept very little cover for FB and treated him pretty poorly… I suppose we let him get a shop window in France which he did use.

Interesting read on the premiership salary cap and player incomes.

https://media-cdn.cortextech.io/b64ee24f-dd74-4648-a7a2-47ea3f4c3559.pdf

No surprise that all the nasty little mouthy hobbits get paid the least 🙂

From RugbyPass today.

Former Ireland centre and Lions tourist Jared Payne, who is an assistant coach with URC rivals the Scarlets, has emerged as the new favourite to take over as Connacht boss.

New Zealand-born Payne, 39, moved into coaching with Ulster in 2018 after being forced into retirement when he failed to recover from an injury suffered on the 2017 Lions tour to his homeland.

He spent a year working in France for Clermont Auvergne after leaving Ulster in 2022 and was placed in interim charge when Jono Gibbes left, and he is known to be highly thought of by IRFU performance director David Humphreys.

I really like the Scarlets attack and I think he's by all accounts a very good coach and well regarded by the players. Had we not signed Rod Seib and we were signing Jared as our backs coach id be 100% happy no actually id be ecstatic.

My main issue around the head Coach roles is that it appears we are unable to meet the financial demands of guys who have the necessary experience so we then have to take a small gamble on guys on the way up ( hopefully).

I would prefer that type of appointment than a guy looking for a coaching life raft.

Still think Dan Mc would be a good fit but I'd happily get on board with Jared.

We don't really know the extent of the hiring process and are unlikely to ever know. But to assume it's a botched process because we don't know is a little tin hat imo.

I believe that there are a lot of highly committed people working for both the irfu and Connacht who have far more skin in the game than any of us fans. I think they will do the very best they can to get the best candidate they can afford.

Well Scarlets are doing well with a reduced squad and budget. Payne is part of that coaching team. It just might be a good fit.

"Theres highly committed people working in every job it doesn't mean they are best placed to make important decisions."

Who do you suggest should make the decision so if not the highly committed people who work for the organizations involved?

There's no guarantee of success in a hiring process. Anyone who has ever hired through any process knows it's a lottery.

Why? That's his job.

A lot of those appointments are going back over a decade. McFarland is gone for over a decade. There was lots of success stories around then coaching wise but of late we have at best a mixed record in recruitment and a terrible record in retention of coaches.

We undoubtedly made some good appointments in more recent times too like Senekal and we brought through coaches from the academy like Mossie Lawlor but they didn't wait around long.

Some of our coaches are promising given the right setup as shown by Ulster being willing to snap up Mark Sexton but it seems that promising coaches don't feel they can realise their potential at Connacht which is a problem.

Yet again this summer is a revolving door of coaches as has become the norm of late.

Teams with continuity within their setup are invariably the teams that are most successful but we enter next season once again in transition hoping that we hit the ground running rather than having any confidence we will.

Like you say every appointment is a gamble and every team gets some wrong but with every gamble you make you want to reduce the risk of it being a failure as much as you can.

When the ordinary supporter knows that an appointment is going to be a failure and you give that head coach a 3 year deal, it would be foolish to think that the current recruitment process doesn't needs to be reviewed.