Connacht pull it out of the fire with late exploits

Connacht 33

JACK Carty’s intuition played a vital role in a barnstorming finish to Saturday’s Challenge Cup clash in the south west of France. On the brink of exiting the competition at the group stage for the first time in seven years, Connacht produced a couple of breathtaking moments in the final ten minutes, including an intercept try from their out-half, to save their campaign and maintain the overall upward curve they are on this season.

The win was Connacht’s eighth victory in ten outings since November, and it was achieved with a much changed squad as Andy Friend once again used this competition to put fringe players to the fore and provide them with an opportunity to shine. By full time, he had given three more players a first appearance in this season’s competition taking the total players used in the Challenge Cup to 43 in the six games.

It would be remiss not to mention, however, that there was a point on Saturday afternoon, at the historic art deco stadium named after a Bordeaux resistance fighter Jacques Chaban Delmas, that the whole strategy appeared to be about to backfire. The hosts, with nothing on the line but pride, appeared set to storm to a comfortable victory, leading 27-19 and camped in the Connacht 22, with a line out just seven metres from the Connacht line. This was a fine mess of a situation for the visitors.

In the post game story telling, Connacht talked of an unwavering belief within the group and a sense that they were never fully out of it, but the benefit of hindsight to that narrative was hard to ignore. The story can be reverse engineered with minimal fuss but the body language told another tale. The visitors looked beaten as they lined up to defend and once Bordeaux secured the ball won a penalty before deciding to go to the corner a second time. The writing seemed on the wall.

So what happened? Well let’s get back to that moment in a bit and instead delve a little deeper into how it all ended up here with Connacht in the last eight of the Challenge Cup. Friend took a decision back in October that he would have to rotate his squad heavily in this competition if the dual objective of a play-off place in the PRO14 and a knockout place in Europe was to be realistic. Both competitions can provide qualification for the Champions Cup, Connacht’s core objective, so ignoring either wasn’t an option.

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

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