Connacht preparations for meeting with Brive have been far from ideal
Earlier this week, as the Connacht Rugby team was stranded in Siberia, winger Tiernan O’Halloran, one of the players who didn’t make the pan-European trek last weekend, tweeted a distress call from the Sportsground. “Anyone around the Galway area with a pair of boots we might need you to fill the numbers in training till the squad get back,” he said.
Of course the Clifden native was messing. But, as is the case with most jokes that are funny, it had more than a grain of truth to it.
Connacht has had the worst possible preparations this week for their European Challenge Cup match with Brive on Saturday at College Road (kick-off 5pm).
The 6,000 kilometres journey to Siberia to take on Russian champions Enisei-STM was always going to be trying logistically. And Pat Lam, sensibly, left a few key players at home, anticipating that the seven-day turnaround, plus sub-zero temperatures and exhausting travel would be too testing a schedule. Nobody could have predicted just how testing though.
Everything had gone swimmingly up to the moment of departure from Russia. Connacht survived the -26°C degree temperatures and secured a bonus point 31-14 victory.
Then the chaos commenced. A banjaxed charter plane; delayed departures; changing hotels; passport and visa complications; the closure of airspace over Europe due to the atrocities in Paris; and then the splitting of the squad into three groups, who returned home separately via Amsterdam and London, days after their intended arrival time.
In the long-run, it’ll stand to many of the players, like newcomer, out-half AJ MacGinty, who made a successful debut; or those on the fringes of the squad who are snapping at the heels of established players and putting their hands up for selection like Peter Robb, Ultan Dillane, Danny Qualter, Sean O’Brien and Caolin Blade.
It was a character-building experience, one that will no doubt aid team-bonding. But in the short-term, it must have taken its toll.
Ordinarily you’d say Connacht should beat Brive at home, but this wasn’t an ordinary week.
Fitness of players shouldn’t be a problem but anyone who has even had their flights delayed on a short-haul flight to London will know that travelling takes a lot out of the body, and mind.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.