Connacht Team Talk Thread VI - Some like it TOH

We were dead on our feet tonight.

The players put so much into the last 5 months, we can't fault them at all.

Massively successful season in my opinion. We won't rest on this. Next season will be great

A lot to look forward to next season after a great end to this one! M Devine going to be a miss though, had a very strong run towards the end of the year.

Wouldn't mind seeing the Ioane head injury again, ref called it fine live, tmo said penalty only, but on the one replay I saw looked direct head on head with the defender being upright.

We still need some bulk though, preferably in the second row!

The excerpt you posted earlier clearly outlines the four ways where, even in a scenario where a team has used all its replacements, they can bring back on a tactically replaced player.

In this case - because of an injury to a front row player (Finlay Bealham), Connacht brought back on a tactically replaced front row player, Sam Illo.

This should have clearly fit within that rule, and I’ve no idea why they were told they had to lose another player to facilitate this.

Hopefully Matthew is just on a sabbatical. He's going out on a positive note having played plenty of games, looks happy. Let's see if he likes Belfast, it'll be tough for him to unseat Doak.

But yes, we really need a piano lifter lock. Unfortunately we're constrained by NIQ slots and I can't think of any really attractive IQ candidates. People mention Cormac Daly and Jack Dunne out in Japan. I haven't seen Daly play and heard that Dunne hasn't been wildly impressive. Sure Lancaster has a view on Dunne as they know one another from Leinster.

All of this is speculative based on the belief that CC qualification has eased budgetary constraints a little.

From my reading of the laws it's pretty clear they didn't get it right.

Unacceptable if this is happening regularly. Surely this is the 4th official's only job.

Steyn was all over ye. He should have been cleaned out early doors.

Such a good performance from Josh Ioane, who finished the season brilliantly. Thought Chris Paterson’s (who I thought was good to listen to in commentary) take on it was exactly right - Glasgow’s hard press had to stutter and stop every time Ioane got the ball because of the quality of his late stepping and his balance.

In relation to us going down to 14.

We had used all our subs.

Finlay got injured and had to leave the field - that means we are down to 14.

A scrum is awarded, in order to avoid uncontested scrums and going down to 13 we must bring on Sam. so Sam comes on and SHL goes off.

We simply go down to 14 because Finlay was injured and we had no more subs.

It just looked weird because Finlay and SHL went off at the same time.

If Finlay went off (down to 14) and then 5 mins later a scrum is called we have to put on a front row player so its a straight swap with SHL and Sam.

My understanding is that Sam can come back on for Finlay IF we have a substitute slot available.

You don’t get unlimited front row replacements,otherwise the whole front row could be replaced twice during a game.

So you get 8 replacements, if you have used 7 replacements and have only a scrum half left on the bench, it’s then that 3.33 kicks in and allows you to replace a prop with a tactically removed prop.

If you have used 8 replacements you don’t get an extra sub just because they are a prop/hooker.

3.5For other matches, the match organiser decides how many replacements may be nominated, up to a maximum of eight.

You’re 100% wrong on this based on the World Rugby laws - unless there is some sort of specific URC competition regulation around this (which I can’t see anywhere) then Connacht should not have been reduced to 14 players last night.

The AR got it arseways, you lose a player if the game has to move to uncontested scrums, but to prevent that you are allowed to bring back on a player who was tactically replaced, even if you’ve used all your replacements. It is really clear on this point.

I put her on ignore, but so many of ye keep quoting her ramblings 😔😔😔