Connacht on a hiding to nothing away to Toulouse

Dara Bradley

God loves a trier, but even his patience with Connacht Rugby must be wearing thin at this stage.

A characteristic of head coach Eric Elwood’s squad this season, despite their limitations, has been that the players kept trying, kept battling away for the jersey. It was a pride thing; pride and professionalism.

Not anymore. Well, certainly not if you are judging by the feeble display against Aironi last weekend in Italy. They didn’t seem to try at all and just caved in to the inevitable once the home side went 14 points up shortly after the restart.  

Forget the lengthy injury list, the loss of key players at the start of the season – time for national commentators to build a bridge. Get over it, lads. It’s half way through the season, those guys are gone – forget that they were away from home, that they are perhaps tired, maybe even emotionally shattered from the agonising defeat to Leinster the previous week.

There can be no excuse for the manner in which the professional sportsmen of Connacht rolled over and allowed the whipping boys of northern hemisphere club rugby tickle their bellies. Nothing can excuse the lack of spirit or the litany of errors made last Saturday as they slumped to a 13th successive defeat; errors that would mortify schoolboys in training, never mind well-paid men who play the game for a living.

Take the reaction when league’s basement outfit scored their try. Teams are supposedly vulnerable after scoring; yet rather than test the theory, the restart was overcooked, handing the advantage back to the Italians. It epitomised the lackadaisical error-ridden approach that was apparent for a large chunk of the 80 minutes.

Rather than the raging bulls that had been stung with an electric prod in the nether regions the last dozen times they took to the field – and in particular that painful Leinster jab last week – Connacht’s reaction to what was flagged as their best opportunity to stop the rot was pedestrian at best. They were just going through the motions. Scrap that; it’s an insult to ‘the motions’.

Connacht did okay in the last 20 minutes when chasing the game and a losing bonus point, which they failed to obtain, but playing okay for a quarter of the 80 is not good enough. Would a professional chef be happy burning three out of every four meals? They played like a team who collectively thought the points were in the bag, easy, and all they had to do was tog out. Ha, fat chance.

The Aironi clash was without a doubt Connacht’s worst performance all year, and it comes just seven days before possibly their toughest challenge of the year, a Heineken Cup away clash with Toulouse, the kings of European rugby.

We won’t insult anyone’s intelligence by suggesting a vast improvement from Connacht is needed this weekend. In fairness, the squad recognised how bad they were.

Stalwart Mike McCarthy was quoted during the week as saying the team “are embarrassed by our performance against Aironi”; and backs coach Billy Millard was quoted as saying the performance was “totally unacceptable, right across the board . . . if you lose games in that fashion, you either don’t care or you’re careless and I think tonight was a bit of both”.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.