Miserable night for Connacht in a shocking loss to weak Italians

Connacht 13Treviso 15

Rob Murphy

A miserable night. This was the rocky horror show of Connacht performances in a game where the usual excuses were never going to wash and expectations were justifiably high. The pressure was on, the opposition were average and the men in green fudged, fumbled and fluffed their way through an excruciating 80 minutes.

In some official channels, the visiting team were described as 'a full strength Treviso', ignoring the 13 first choice Heineken Cup players who didn’t start. Ten of those front liners had their feet up back in north east Italy. Treviso travelled light, boxed clever and sniggered their way back to Dublin airport with a third away win, leaving the home side nursing a nasty hangover.

While the Heineken Cup sell outs and consecutive seasons significant attendance growth help strengthen the argument that the Connacht public have an appetite for the game, those naysayers who felt promoting the backroom team from the previous regime was not enough of a change, can gather plenty of ammunition on nights like these.

However, there are still signs there that might quell some of the disconsolate feelings – you just have to be interested enough to at least look for them amid the carnage of the past couple of months. It's a challenge, as three home defeats which were almost certainly on the target win list and the recurring theme of mis-managing one score games, are causing much concern among followers.

Let’s first get back to a with a wet and windy Sportsground on Friday night. The game was lost between the 11th and 20th minute mark where Connacht conceded 15 points without reply. The tries were poor, Ludovico Nitogila and Brendan Williams combined to beat four Connacht defenders. Tiernan O’Halloran was left flat footed on that one.

Then a combination of Gavin Duffy, Mark McCrea and Kyle Tonetti stopped and looked at a loose ball thinking, eh, well we really have no clue what they were thinking, but in the meantime, Tommaso Iannone pounced and went on a 60 metre grubber kick and chase to score try number two for a 15-0 lead.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.