Connacht Team Talk Thread V - The Friend Zone

Absolutely nothing is going right

What a play by Carty!

The balls on that fella!!!!

Carty throws a 20 metre pass and Butler is stopped just short of the line, commentator sounds like he's watching a scrum reset.

Marmion had to be taking control there to move play back towards the posts. Even if that was a try, it was a shocker of a kick from near the touch line to go ahead.

Well, that's sh*te.

Great for the league but Connacht absolutely left that behind with some unlucky moments, sloppy decisions (even allowing for the conditions) and poor defending.

Boyle should be very happy with his showing but I doubt he'll be too pleased at present.

The second string lads who earned a lot of credit for Edinburgh, lost a lot tonight. No game for a month with Scarlets having two games didn't help but we dropped the ball twice over the line.

Team selection awful as well. Unacceptable result these days.

ElisaAtWar wrote: »

I don't want to simplify rugby but this mental throwing the ball around has to stop. Connacht are well able to build stable phases. And Jack had a right stinker

While I agree jack had a poor day overall he was far from alone in that.
Seems to be a bit of a trend with lads coming back from internationals as another poster mentioned.
Is it as simple as not playing any competitive rugby in so long I wonder? Hopefully it is.

JohnniDrama wrote: »

Very disappointing. Looked very poor tonight. Again.

Boyle played well but others and again the more senior players, just not at it at all.

Friend has a few problems to solve.

Yup. Was disappointed with Marmion. Stupid offload from the deck (and poor execution) as well as iffy direction. Buckley with a superman impression and white line fever. Feel sorry for Healy but he's a back three player who was a scrum half for years. His hands should be far better.

Carty had a few nice moments in the second half when needed even if he was a little fortunate once or twice. I thought Thornbury was decent. Showed very good awareness to pull the ball back from a maul being formed late on when he recognised that the Scarlets had swarmed.

I was hoping Butler would have been a little more influential although I could watch that sort of game back and realise he was everywhere just not getting the headline moments.

connachta wrote: »

This could have ended without a BP let's take it

Healy wasn't in it,
Carty had one great kick, the rest..
Arnold brings not much

The forwards did a pretty good job, that's promising
Porch is brillant overall

Not sure about that. Thought he made bad defensive reads for both Scarlets’ tries.

Obviously our preparation was far from ideal, having consecutive games cancelled, but even with that caveat I thought we were very poor tonight. We came into this with two wins from three, off the back of a good performance in Edinburgh, plus we were at home. Scarlets were 2/5 and had probably left home at 6am, yet they were the ones who provided the emotional energy and pop. We were so flat, so quiet, so meek. They celebrated every single moment whereas we barely communicated aside from complaining to the referee. Butler is a good captain; he's level headed, he works hard, he makes good decisions, he deals with referees well. He is not however particularly vocal, and without Bundee providing the encouragement, chat, and a bit of niggle we look a bit lost. Conor Oliver provided a bit of spark when he came on to be fair.

The two tries we conceded in the first half were really poor. Our straight up tackling is really good, but whenever our opponents throw some midfield deception at us we are liable to be torn to pieces. Players get caught between shooting and drifting, between trusting their inside man and biting in. This has the case for Peter Wilkins' entire tenure to my mind.

We have had some really good days under Andy Friend but we are so incredibly inconsistent. Today we made so many terrible errors and braindead decisions, but next week we might cut them out and play really well. It's so hard to know what to expect. A lot of the really bad performances seem to have come against the Welsh teams.

Positives, hmm. Encouraging performances from Kenny, Papali'i, and Reilly. A huge effort from Paul Boyle. Not a whole pile else to be honest.

Three knock-ons with the line at your mercy. Ah here.

Boyle could be knocking on the Ireland door for 2021 if he maintains that kind of form. Scarlets couldn't handle his pace from the base of the scrum at all. Watching him tonight reminded me of a rampaging Denis Leamy.

Former Coach wrote: »

https://twitter.com/pro14official/status/1327741191966781440?s=21

You have to trust your inside men. Matt Healy was going to get the tackle in on McNicholl for the first one and Wooton would have for the second.

Wooton is a terrible defender.