Connacht v Ospreys 28th September 2013 K/O 17:00

rossie wrote: I don't know what the significance of Clarke stat of hitting 15 trucks in first half is?!

Maybe the fact that he hit 1/3 of our offensive rucks in the first half, the ball came back sharpish from all but one of those, and wasn't there in the second? Faloon and the props were also in the top few at the breakdown in the first 40, once they went off/tired we couldn't hold on to the ball in the second half.

rossie wrote: The only significance of the breakdown in 1st half is 4/5 holding on pens and 2/3 turnovers.

The significance of our breakdown travails was massively overegged. 4 out of our first 5 possessions we turned over, but we were still 7-0 up. For the rest of the first half we traded evenly on turnovers (2 vs 2), and we had a good setpiece platform, so the reasons we failed to kick on fall into the Same-Old-Sh1t bucket:

Only one ball carrier in the pack (Heenan, I think you called this out the day the team came out).

No control at flyhalf. Not only did Parks miss a gimme, he also turned down another penalty (then fluffed the kick to touch) and tried another cross kick to nowhere when we needed to hold on to the ball.

Bad hands/trying stuff that wasn't on. Duffy overran the ball carrier 3 times (one knockon, one forward pass, one penalty against the ballcarrier). White passed straight into touch. The ball was dropped (backwards, thankfully) on 3 occasions.

You might have guessed I'm not overly confident about today but sure we live in hope anyway. It's not like previous form counts that much for a team that can lose to Treviso, Edinburgh and Cardiff at home, then turn around and beat Leinster, Ospreys and Biarritz.

Ah Galway Bay FM, now that we've been told where the cake sales are on (which apparently take news priority over earthquakes on the Subcontinent), it's over to Corpse Countdown. Family flowers only.

3-7, sounds like Ronaldson has no problem with kicking confidence.

If it weren't for galwaybayfm I would never have known that the Uk will be releasing coins to celebrate the birth of some child. Great public service there.
Seriously though I wonder how much it would cost to set up a connacht (clan) online radio service for games.

19-22, try Poolman.Game on.

The front 5 seem to be motoring.

Game freaking on! After having no real idea how to cross the try line the second half has sounded absolutely fantastic. I think Pat's half time talk must have been a rocket!

From listening to the Radio, how in the hell has no Ospreys player seen yellow. 11 penalties conceded by them.

Also listening on the www.

Sounds a little more promising than last week.

Error rate high.

At least we are scoring.

Defence was atrocious. Some of our first up tackles were laughable. Tebaldi streaked in unapposed from 22 metres out with 4 of our lads looking at him. Not good enough. Any time Ospreys got on the front foot they looked like they'd score. We have to hit harder in the tackle and commit.

The only good thing here is that I don't think it's any real system malfunction. We just have to make our first up hits and stop teams getting front foot ball. At the minute we're way too east to score against.

Plenty of positives imo. We really stuck to our task. Got 2 very good tries. Poolman showed real intelligence for both tries and picked a beauty of a line for his try. Scrum was very solid, Wilko gave as good as he got with Adam Jones. Healy looked dangerous again. Heenan again performed well, Browne did well, our lineout looks like a weapon with Clarke in there.

Concerns are Duffy doesn't look up to it anymore. Couple of poor knock ons, should have put Walker into touch for their 3rd try and no real penetration hitting the line. I'd like to see someone else at 15 next week. I think Muldowney has earned a start, I'd put him in ahead of Swifty. Marmion was caught a few times too many around the ruck, he has to be sharper.

We showed this evening that for large parts we were good enough to compete with the Ospreys. But we've got to sort our defence out.

would a start for o'donoghue be good for marmion....give him a break, but also see how pod goes.

Darragh507 wrote: would a start for o'donoghue be good for marmion....give him a break, but also see how pod goes.

Possibly. Next week the best time to do it. POD was effective off the bench v Zebre and Cardiff

I would completely agree with porterbellys assessment and also add that even though swifty was captain, clarke was running the show! Every set piece the pack looked to Clarke.

merchantdon wrote: I would completely agree with porterbellys assessment and also add that even though swifty was captain, clarke was running the show! Every set piece the pack looked to Clarke.

Ya very noticeable. Swifty was looking to him for direction in the first half

And it was definitely Clarke who ordered Parks to kick to the corner before Marmion scored his try

well said porterbelly

how could gav not stop walker getting that try is beyond me i had a birds eye view of it he should have bundled him to touch

marmion looked jetlagged have to say so did muls - he got the ball poached from him which is unusual for him

clarke was solid at lineout

ronaldson had a woeful start but 4/5 aint bad and he continously attacks the line more to come from him

we badly need a defence coach. 26 would win most pro12 games.

ronaldson, dead leg, should be ok

swift is out of the treviso game, I HEARD, im not a doctor tho

rael got injured in the cool down the subs do after the game, walked of saying ''did something to my leg''.

While there are some positives, I found this evening extremely dispiriting. In the last few years we had made ourselves harder to beat most days but really at least 4 of the tries this evening were scored with embarrassing ease and really I felt Ospreys could score when they needed to. Ospreys took their chances well but they really didn't have to work awfully hard for their tries.

There were some good cameos and we played some good stuff in attack at times but once again at the breakdown and defensively we were atrocious.

I dread to think what Saracens will do to us in 2 weeks time.

I know that they get breasted in training, but just one word ...... Tackle. Basic technique, go low first and foremost if you can't get a two man tackle. Get big guys down quicker by chopping their legs.