Connacht Away Sept 29th 5.15

[wixfjord]

Interested to see how Tomane goes today in particular.

Weather looks pretty good in Galway for a change today!

One minute in and he concedes three. Off to a great start.

That wasn’t Tomane’s fault

Yep, wasn't anything to do with Tomane. Ringrose missed the clear out.

[fourthirtythree]

Said Tomane would have his best game for us. They are very lucky to be only three behind.

[wixfjord]

Fairly tasty game.

Our passing has been poor at times but there seems to be a huge wind there.

Would expect us to open up a bit more in second half.

Fardy was pretty poor for first 20 and then had a cracking second 20.

Lowe a livewire as usual and Tomane having a good game too. A bit tentative to start but grew into game also.

[nelly the elephant]

Josh doing great in that spell of 19-phase pressure from them....Great to see him back.

[Blue not red blood]

How many Van der Fliers are playing???

[Serb]

Phenomenal defence from Leinster. Commentators on Eir are harping on about how good Connacht were retaining the ball, but by the time they knocked it on they were 20 meters behind where they started.

Also liking our determination to play the ball through the hands. Making massive amounts of meters each time. There was a point in the first half where we took the ball on our own 5 meter line and through phase play, won a penalty just inside Connacht’s half.

[Blue not red blood]

Westies must have been to Ulster booing practices

[Blue not red blood]

A nugget of a try

[paddyor]

How many Van der Fliers are playing???

Love the way he gets up in the first receivers face.

[Serb]

Scummy stamp to the head there. Deserved red card.

[cormac]

Scummy stamp to the head there. Deserved red card.

Only on the pitch for about 30 seconds. Quite the impact

[wixfjord]

Fairly dominant all over for us.

Need to improve a bit going forward but with a bit more composure that could've been a TBP win. Not often you say that coming out of Galway.

Hopefully Rhys and Larmour aren't bad.

[Cianostays]

Very satisfying win (and a very important on). VDF really was excellent but the whole team played with real steel. It'll be intresting to see the team for Munster after this.

Sent from my SM-G531F using Tapatalk

[LeRouxIsPHat]

We were really sloppy at times in the first half but pretty much dominated for the vast majority of the game. If a message had come down to stop throwing the ball away then I reckon the floodgates would have opened. Lacey was really frustrating as well, allowed Connacht away with an awful lot at the breakdown. That said, we were blessed that he didn't card Cronin or Fardy for the tip.

I don't get the praise for Tomane, it may well have been his best game for us but that doesn't mean he actually played well. His tackling is so passive, he's always way too high in contact and ends up just grabbing at the ball carrier for a few metres until they eventually go to ground or someone else joins in. The timing of his passing was very poor too. He either released it too early or too late and cost us some overlaps. Rob Kearney was guilty of that too, still doesn't look very sharp to me although did well before Ringrose's try. Tomane could do with copying Luke's tackle technique, he was brilliant at getting off the line and chopping down the ball carrier, stopped Bundee dead a couple of times and covered brilliantly after one break. The one time Tomane put in a hit that stuck was when he tipped someone and should have been penalised. IMO he ticks all the right boxes on paper, but barely any of them on the pitch as of yet.

That sounds very negative but in general we played really well. I didn't expect us to be so comfortable but really we made it look very easy considering Connacht were so aggressive at times. Just frustrating that we didn't execute better when we had numbers/momentum. Not too worried about the scrum, thought some calls looked harsh.

[Ruckedtobits]

We were really sloppy at times in the first half but pretty much dominated for the vast majority of the game. If a message had come down to stop throwing the ball away then I reckon the floodgates would have opened. Lacey was really frustrating as well, allowed Connacht away with an awful lot at the breakdown. That said, we were blessed that he didn't card Cronin or Fardy for the tip.

I don't get the praise for Tomane, it may well have been his best game for us but that doesn't mean he actually played well. His tackling is so passive, he's always way too high in contact and ends up just grabbing at the ball carrier for a few metres until they eventually go to ground or someone else joins in. The timing of his passing was very poor too. He either released it too early or too late and cost us some overlaps. Rob Kearney was guilty of that too, still doesn't look very sharp to me although did well before Ringrose's try. Tomane could do with copying Luke's tackle technique, he was brilliant at getting off the line and chopping down the ball carrier, stopped Bundee dead a couple of times and covered brilliantly after one break. The one time Tomane put in a hit that stuck was when he tipped someone and should have been penalised. IMO he ticks all the right boxes on paper, but barely any of them on the pitch as of yet.

That sounds very negative but in general we played really well. I didn't expect us to be so comfortable but really we made it look very easy considering Connacht were so aggressive at times. Just frustrating that we didn't execute better when we had numbers/momentum. Not too worried about the scrum, thought some calls looked harsh.

+1.
Tomane at the moment is all shapes but no substance. In this league, you don't get away with tackling with your hands and arms only. In this team, its not good enough to shuffle a pass at the player outside, it must be in front of him. For a guy who was a decent international for three years and a tough opponent when playing against MontP, he's a serious disappointment thus far and plays as if he's protecting a shoulder injury. Two weeks training with the Academy forwards on tackling with each shoulder might be a recipe for improvement. Otherwise, this is looking like a not very wise recruit.

[molloyjh]

Tomane wasn’t great, but he wasn’t terrible either. That’s an improvement in where he was. If he’s improved the last few weeks he’ll improve in the coming weeks too. He won’t play again for us for a month. He picked some good lines, sucked in defenders and was generally where he needed to be.

Overall we dominated that game. Really happy with our defence the last 2 games. We’ve been loose going forward but we’ve also shown a lot of promise in terms of line breaks and gains. If we can build on this and maintain our form we’ll be very tough to beat.

[Oldschool]

Very satisfying win (and a very important on). VDF really was excellent but the whole team played with real steel. It'll be intresting to see the team for Munster after this.

Sent from my SM-G531F using Tapatalk

At a guess the coaches decided to bag the points against Connacht in order to give themselves flexibility in selection for the Munster game.

[tingman]

Happy enough with that - agree with others we were a bit sloppy offensively - loose passes / final offloads that just were not on. More composure and we might have
given them a good beating. Thought they were limited and one dimensional. Great to have VDF back and a nice shift from SOB.....Scrum performance worrying though.

[Gearzbox2]

Thrilled with that performance tbh, steel in defense for 80 minutes and not an inch given
Put them back in their box which was great to see
I was at the game and some of their supporters are pretty average individuals who were even “he haw” calling Rhys for a knock on in the warm up, once they were getting spanked on the pitch they turned on the ref

Back to the game....
Grind up front with some strange calls at scrum where I thought we were dominant
Line out very good considering the conditions and to a man all put in a shift
But special mention to JVDF and SOB7 as I’ll call them, superb
Cronin took his try very well, he’s unstoppable from there

I actually thought Tomane was ok, worked hard at the break down and carried well
For me Lowe was way too loose, same as last year down there, flinging balls around and throwing away possession
Ringer is a joy to watch and Johnny marshaled well

Probably a few changes next week I reckon

[curates_egg]

What happened to Ruddock? Lost signal for his injury.

Very good performance in general. Could easily have been five points if a couple of offloads had been slightly more accurate.