Connacht v. Munster - Saturday 5th January - 735 p.m. KO

Got rode by the ref but that aside Munster probably just about deserved it. Couple of things we need to improve:
1) maul defence, they killed us there tonight though they looked physically bigger than us and one of their tries looked dodgy to me
2) kick chase. They won the kicking battle but we had some decent kicks made bad by disjointed slow chases.

Carty and T Farell outstanding tonight, and carberry must have slipped someone a tenner to get MOM as he wasn't even close to Munsters best player

Despite the positives the result showed that game was there for the taking, considering it was the most pivotal given Munster are in our conference it makes it all the more baffling that we sent out our weakest team (of the 3) in that game, forgetting about Aki we still left a number of front line players out and Denis pulling up before the game was another blow (I never heard what happened there), fortunate in the end to get the lbp but bitterly disappointed to let them slink back south with 5 points, on a positive Tom Farrell.

Decent result to get a bonus point against a fully cocked Munster missing Bundee, TOH, Marmion, Denis, Butler, and Copeland - all of whom apparently were out injured! Always annoying to get beaten by Munster, but great positives from the game. McCabe and Robertson-McCoy held their own in the scrum, and our locks looked every bit as effective as theirs. Boyle and Fainga'a every bit as good as their opponents in the back row. Unfair to expect Eoghan Masterson to be at the top of his game second time out this season and this would've been an excellent game to play Copeland (if not against Munster at home, then when). Carty has improved beyond all recognition under this year's coaching team, and surely Blade and Tom Farrell must be called into the Six Nations squad. Blade is the form 9 in the country, and Tom the form centre. I won't hold my breath though that Schmidt will pick them.

Buckley is just sick, no injury.

So in all likelihood Buckley will start vs Sharks and get us the 5-1 or 4-0 split we need!

The one worrying thing from the interpros is that we're conceding a large amount of tries off lineout mauls. and in reverse getting very little success from the lineout, if we could fix that we'd be in a great position, and I know a strong maul is hard to defend.

I was very disappointed after the game - not because we lost, honestly we didn't really deserve to win - but because we could have won that had we played a stronger team, Munster were as fully loaded as they could be.

There was a period in the second half where the game was slipping away from us, Munster put 17 points on the board and we didn't help ourselves. 3 times in this period we had a good attaching platform.

1st time, well into the 22, the center of the pitch and someone (Boyle?) picks a ball from a ruck he is part of, drives thru, penalty Munster.
2nd time, lineout in front of the Clan, just outside the 22, Blade is a little slow in passing from a scrapply won line out, gets tackled in the pass, knock on, someone in Green picks it up, penalty Munster
3rd time, lineout in front of the Grant-Thornton, just outside the 22, can't remember what happened, but it was a penalty Munster.

Despite all the club caps and international caps, this is what it came down to, a little mistake or rush of blood and Munster are let of the hook.

I am quite happy that we have blooded a lot of players this term, we will be stronger for it, but we could have won that.

By my count we only rested two players, with one of those being named on the bench. I think we intended to start Bundee in this game but the decision was taken out of our hands by the late withdrawal up in Dublin, unfortunate but not something I’d criticise management over.

Magpie wrote: 1st time, well into the 22, the center of the pitch and someone (Boyle?) picks a ball from a ruck he is part of, drives thru, penalty Munster.
2nd time, lineout in front of the Clan, just outside the 22, Blade is a little slow in passing from a scrapply won line out, gets tackled in the pass, knock on, someone in Green picks it up, penalty Munster
3rd time, lineout in front of the Grant-Thornton, just outside the 22, can't remember what happened, but it was a penalty Munster.

1st one was Fainga'a; 2nd was Dillane; 3rd we lost the lineout and on the way down Thornbury pulled O'Mahony in the air.

Do we know why we did not contest any of their lineouts? I found it very frustrating when they stole two of ours. Also we had two penalties in the closing 20 mins and we tap and go with no one ready and we then loose the ball. On paper they should have well beaten us so a loosing bonus point is pretty good. The fact we could have won with a bit more sharpness is definitely promising. If we keep going the way we are we could win another 26-30 points, hope it’s enough, onto Sale this Saturday.

Disappointing result overall, obviously last week I was happy to beat Ulster but that game didn't mean as much as potentially beating our conference rivals. Honestly would have preferred the strongest selection had been made for the Munster game, its reasonable to say we would have had a good chance of winning and we would have come out of 3 interpros with 1 win, same as we have now.

Enda wrote: Do we know why we did not contest any of their lineouts? I found it very frustrating when they stole two of ours. Also we had two penalties in the closing 20 mins and we tap and go with no one ready and we then loose the ball. On paper they should have well beaten us so a loosing bonus point is pretty good.

We did contest some lineouts, we just didn't succeed. For lineouts close to our line, they clearly decided not to contest in the air to give themselves a better chance of defending the maul (which didn't really work).

On the quick taps, that generally annoys me too, but our last try came almost directly from a quick tap by Angus Lloyd, and Andy Friend spoke afterwards about how happy he was to see Angus doing that, and that it is their plan to keep the tempo up by doing things like it.