Connacht left to rue another failure to show their best side
Date Published: {J}
Rob Murphy
MAYBE things aren't as bad as they seem. There are some positives from this run of defeats, even after this latest home loss at the hands of a strong and wily old Gloucester side that offered little in terms of pure class, but plenty of grit and hard work on Saturday.
Somewhere deep in the basement of this frustrating run of results, there is a box inscribed with the words ‘reasons for hope’ or ‘bigger picture’ or ‘long term plan’ or something like that. You know it's there, but it’s just so easy to ignore. Maybe, just maybe, things aren't all that bad.
For those of you who dived into this looking for some hard hitting analysis lamenting another defeat, don't worry we have some juicy digs further down. Niall O'Connor gets a few, mainly sparked by his inexplicable decision to kick the ball away on the last play of the game.
There are plenty of other moans, like our concern for a clearly out of sorts Rodney Ah You who was at walking pace after 25 minutes of rugby as a replacement or our frustration at the lack of vim from Fetu Vainikolo, or the snide comments about young local players not belonging at this level. Step up Eoin McKeon.
But that's for later, for now you're getting something a lot more positive and no skipping forward folks. Connacht are not that bad of a team, they are not as bad as they feel right now. Nine defeats in a row can't be ignored, the losing run must be mentioned in every article for clarity and integrity.
This was a game where they looked in a real quandary when James Simpson Daniel scurried over for a try off a pass from the irrepressible Eliota Fuimano Sapolu, which combined with 21-year-old Freddie Burns’ two penalties, made it 11-0 on the half hour mark.Yet they fought back through Gavin Duffy’s try within a minute and were within one after half time thanks to an O’Connor penalty. Once again though, the key scores eluded the men in green.
To end this losing run, Eric Elwood’s side will have to cause an upset, beat the bookies odds by a fair distance in one of the forthcoming games, or else the consecutive defeats total could reach as much as 16 by February. Yet still we feel things are better than before. The commitment, the tackling, the work rate, the breakdown clearouts by backs and forwards were all infinitely better here than against Treviso.
For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.