Time to Front Up for last stand

Dara Bradley

The roller-coaster season for Connacht Rugby continues. Connacht followed up their worst, most frustrating performance of the 2011/2012 campaign against Aironi Saturday week, with one of their best showings of the season, a defiant, fiery 80 minutes away to Europe’s elite and most successful club, Toulouse, last weekend.

Woeful one week against limited opposition; wonderful the next against the top northern hemisphere club. Go figure.

The previous two matches had similar Jekyll and Hyde characteristics: poor, error-prone against Munster and close to brilliant seven days later against European champions, Leinster. Connacht restored pride in themselves and to the jersey with their mighty effort against Toulouse but the genuine goodwill garnered will evaporate rapidly again unless Eric Elwood’s charges can avoid what has now become an annoying habit of following up a good performance with a bad one.

It’s not getting any easier, however.

Harlequins roll into town this Friday on the back of a six-point win over Gloucester on Saturday knowing that a bonus point victory at the Sportsground (8pm) could make their Heineken Cup quarter-final qualification dreams come true, depending on results elsewhere. The Aviva Premiership league leaders are in top-form and have lost just three out of the 18 competitive domestic and European fixtures they’ve played in so far this season.

Of the seven previous meetings between the two sides, Connacht has got the upper-hand just once, although in the away leg at the Stoop, Twickenham in November, Connacht were class, had their hosts rattled and certainly didn’t deserve to come away without a losing bonus. They were cruelly robbed with two late Nick Evans penalties, which should be enough of a warning to the home side that give the visiting New Zealand fly-half an even break and he’ll punish you.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.