Ospreys v Connacht 7/1/17 - Match Thread

salmson wrote:

Accidentally Onside wrote: That's a really competitive team. I don't think we'll win but with all the injuries it says a lot about our squad that we can still field such a strong 15.

That said the osprey bench looks very strong so think we might be very competitive for 55-60 mins then fall away. Would snap your hand off for a bonus point. We need Ulster and Glasgow to have big games this weekend to keep the league interesting for us

Surely it doesn't matter which of Scarlets or Ulster wins (Ulster would be a point ahead of Scarlets if the Zebre game handn't been called off)? I'll be happy either way as long as only 4 match points are awarded between the two.

Edit: You might have a point in rooting for Ulster - Scarlets are away to Glasgow, Leinster & Munster in their next 5 so a loss tomorrow could start them tanking as per lat year.

Just a thought to add to your optimism:

I watched the sin bin and penalty try for the high tackle by Sean Reidy in the Scarlets vs Ulster match last night which was very quickly balanced out by a yellow for Jake Ball again for a high tackle.
Pat often mentions coaching our players to the letter of the directions issued by the referee organisers (see post match last week regarding issues at the breakdown).
While we probably have been limited in the amount of contact during training these past few weeks, I'd be sure that we are working on presenting the right kind of picture to referees regarding the height of tackle.
A decision like last night could turn the match in our favour today.
Alternatively, I gather Leinster vs Zebre was full of high tackles as per last week.
Don't get your hopes up too much but you never know.....

Where to do we go from here. Jack Carty now out with ACL. Still a bit to go here. Don't really care about the score just get this over at this stage.

Our injuries list is going from awful to horrendous.... Jack out for possible ACL injury.... 25 now down.

Borders no.2 wrote: "Where to do we go from here..."

Something we are all scratching our heads thinking about.

Any word on Jake?

The injuries are hugely disappointing, Ospreys well worth the win today though. Strolling through our midfield for tries, first up tackling atrocious at times and our lineout once again fell apart.

I'm going to sound like an awful whinger, and this is kinda seperate from the match because it had absolutely 0 effect on the outcome, but I detest John Lacey as a referee. He's not up to it at all... didn't care about holding on at all today for either side, was there maybe 1 penalty called for that? Buckley was over the ball multiple times legitimately as well as other players and it went the other way too, we got away with holding on a few times. At least twice for us a player CLEARLY had a knee to ground and instead of calling tackle he waited until the attacking players had to do something about their player being illegally held and called maul then resulting in a turnover. Completely ignored a VERY blatant high tackle right in front of him and only went back because his tmo got in his ear about it. Reset the lineout which is not the law at all when an extra player is on the field, it's a penalty(We would have gone for a lineout again anyway but that's immaterial). All round just a bad ref. Rant/Whinge over, feel free to blast me for it but just to be clear again it had nothing to do with the outcome of the match just every time I see him ref a game he infuriates me.

Ehh... in an attempt to not sound like a complete moaner, Cooney's kicking was great today, Parata's not bad either. Scrum went really well, the one time it was penalised I thought it was the wrong call(Shocking that I would disagree with Mr. Lacey I know...)

I am at a loos as to why Connacht have such a huge injury list. No other province - playing as much rugby as we are - have no where near the fall out levels. Its almost 'Keystone Cops' stuff at this stage & it will end our season very swiftly now unfortunately.

Pro 12 position is now very hard to even come near predicting & ,as for Europe, it will be in the lap of the Gods

We're shipping 40 to 50 more tackles than we're doling out, per game, it's not any more complicated than that:

We make less tackles than any team in the league (avg. 96, median 90).

We are the second most tackled team in the league after Ospreys.

The gap between tackles made and taken (avg. 44, median 53) is twice that of the next team, Glasgow (who get hit 20 times more than their opposition per game).

There's a similar pattern in Europe.

Last year tackles made and taken were even, about 125 tackles for and against us.

The stats would be even more stark if you took out our opening three defeats, where we didn't dominate possession. In most games we're taking about twice as many tackles as we're making. Against Dragons we made 90 and took 241.

Teams are denying us unstructured possession from poor kicks or turnovers in the opposition half. They're simply leathering the ball into touch or as per Munster taking a couple pick and gos and then kick chasing. Unlike last year they are not attempting to build phases against us. Last year we scored a lot of first or second phase tries e.g. Grenoble, and buckets on the counter attack e.g. all the tries in the final (2 kick returns and a turnover in the opposition 22). We didn't score a heap of many-phased tries like Aki's winner against Toulouse, and this year teams are gambling that they can give us possession deep and keep their discipline. So far they've been proved correct.

A side effect of this is our injuries. We're literally getting pummeled every match, and don't forget with us in possession we have to resource every ruck, unlike the defending team who can ruck or not as they deem appropriate.

There's probably secondary multiplicative factors - like Jack and Mul playing every game - but I'm convinced it comes down to the hits we're taking. No other team in the top eight sees such onesidedness of possession and tackle counts.