Incensed Elwood calls on players to improve discipline

Dara Bradley

It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall at Connacht Rugby’s debriefing at the Sportsground on Monday, days after losing 19-14 to Edinburgh in Murrayfield.

Head coach Eric Elwood was fuming at that session. He must have been – even hours later when he addressed reporters at a press briefing ahead of this Friday’s RaboDirect Pro12 home clash with Dragons (kick-off 7.30pm), the frustration still hadn’t cleared from Elwood’s system.

Would you blame him, after his charges conceded five times as many penalties as their opponents – ten versus two – in the opening half of a drab encounter in the Scottish capital?

Alarmingly, that translates to Connacht, on average, conceding a penalty every four minutes. The concession of two more penalties immediately after the restart must have given him ulcers. Not near good enough for professionals. Elwood knows it, and he told them as much.

“We spoke ourselves today honestly . . . we went there believing we could win that game. I know from speaking to Michael (Bradley, Edinburgh coach), he doesn’t know how they won it. That’s even more worrying,” said Elwood, before correcting himself: “Sorry, he knows how they won it, they won it because of the ill-discipline. That’s the frustrating part – we do believe it’s three points lost.”

He became visibly annoyed as he added: “We were very happy with how the lads had approached the game in the first half in particular but what killed us was our discipline. It was always going to be a tight game . . . we knew it was going to be tough to break them down. For us, you can’t give any team 10 penalties to two in the first half.

“They got two kickable penalties and they got them; we got two and missed them. That’s harsh on our (number) tens but that’s the business they’re in – it’s nice when you get them, not so nice when you don’t get them.

“They took their kicks, we missed our kicks, and we go in losing 6-0 at half-time. We have all the possession but have nothing to show for it. If we had taken chances earlier, had our discipline earlier, then we would have been well in the game – in fact we could have been leading 11-0 at half-time. That’s the frustrating part. Something we could have controlled ourselves, discipline, has cost us the game.

“I spoke to Gavin (Duffy, who was sin-binned for ill-discipline). It’s hard enough winning with 15 players, you can’t win with 14. You can’t have that from our captain; he knows that, that’s just the brutal honesty of it. If you concede that amount of penalties and then go down to 14 men you’re just putting pressure on ourselves. The one word from me was discipline. That was the winning and losing of the game – discipline.”

Elwood also revealed that after the debriefing, the players engaged in a bruising training session and he has now challenged his players to translate that physicality onto the field against the Scarlets.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.