Connacht v Munster Saturday 19th April KO: 18.15

its_phil wrote:

rossie wrote: The basic foundation of any good team in any code is defence and connacht have been poor in both structure and one on one basics in defence for the 3 to 4 seasons ive watched them. Every team ive ever been involved with make themselves as difficult as possible to beat first and foremost before working on the rest. Connacht have failed miserably in that regard in spite of their improvements in other areas.

Completely untrue with regards failed miserably. 09/10 (before Italians came in) we were bottom with most tries conceded and most points conceded in 18 games. The following seasons looked like this:

TA PA
2010/11: 6TH 7TH
2011/12: 6TH 7TH
2012/13: T5TH 7TH

That is a constant level of consistency and last year our main problem was coughing up cheap 3 point penalties. Your talking about being hard to beat first and foremost. I find it no coincidence that our steady rise up the table over 3 seasons was down to the defence more than anything else which made us hard to beat. The problem was being hard to beat doesn't always win matches as can be seen in our poor try scoring and points scoring.

If you want to criticise this years defence by all means, it is more than understandable. But the previous three years defensively to be termed "failed miserably" is simply unfounded and was actually the backbone of our rise because I know our attack wasn't.

For as long as ive been on this forum people have lamented defensive systems failures and missed one on one tackles. Failure to put pillars on rucks v glasgow or not covering the blind side at scrum time v quins spring to mind. The tries scarlets scored from 2m out a few weeks ago also springs to mind. Its the achilles heel of this team.
It may be better now than it was in 2010. That doesnt mean its good enough. The departure of a defence coach should not mean the collapse of a defence system.

Just because we moan about something doesn't mean it's true

For the record, our defence this year is worse than it has been in any of the last three years (no point going back further; we were consistently awful for six straight years):

Season T-A/Game Pts-A/Game
2010/11 1.95 20.87
2011/12 1.64 19.68
2012/13 1.95 19.18
2013/14 2.25 22.10

Note that tries conceded doesn't always correlate to points conceded (e.g. last season we conceded more tries but fewer points) but this year it seems to (third most tries conceded, third most points conceded).

However defence is certainly not our number one problem.

Only 4 teams have scored more tries, but all bar Zebre have scored more points. Whatever way you look at it, this season as been defined by poor goalkicking above all other factors.

Yes Connacht have conceded more tries than last season.

They've also scored 5 more tries than last season, with two games spare.

They also have 4 TBP and 6 LBP so far this year compared to 1 and 3 respectively.

They've also scored more tries than the three teams above them in the league, although of course this could change by the end of the season.

Even if you accept that defense is significantly worse than last season, which I don't quite agree with yet, you must also note that attack is much, much more incisive, and Connacht are blatantly, hugely, more competitive than last season.

Its hard to argue we are hugely more competitive than last season really. Just because the scores are more Super 15 than we are accustomed to doesn't mean our competitiveness has increased. We need to win against Cardiff just to match last season's points total.

-106 (which is more likely to disimprove than improve) compared to -64 in terms of scoring difference. 6 wins (max 7) compared to 8 + 1 draw last season.

Ok we've a few more bonus points got but looking through them, the 3 (h&a) against Scarlets all came from coming back from well down when Scarlets had been in control. The 1 against Munster came with the game over when Munster made a raft of changes. That's not to say I don't admire our resilience in getting some reward in those games.

Glasgow at home, we were always chasing the game after a bad start and never really looked like winning it. Leinster away and Glasgow (by all accounts) away were two we blew.

We have had some very bad hammerings this season. I'm not looking at Eric's tenure with rose tinted glasses, there were a number of issues there but under Eric while we definitely didn't pose as big an attacking threat but you could count the number of hammerings over his three seasons in charge on one hand. This season they've been numerous and the points against column in games has hit Bradley levels far too regularly. Under Eric we were rarely a soft bonus point for the big teams but we have had too many of those days this season.

I have heard plenty of people dress up Saturday but the reality is Munster walked the bonus point at their ease and the game was over at half time.

Edinburgh away, Saracens away, Ulster away were bad beatings but there are plenty of games this season where we've never been in with a chance of winning the game but managed to make the scoreboard respectable.

Its been a change of style and with no defence coach etc. there were always going to be issues and there is a lot of positives in what we are trying to do but we've become too easy to get tries against this season. As players get used to the system it will help but even allowing for that defensively I don't feel confident with us anymore. We used to give away a lot of 3 points opportunities to the opposition but be relatively solid, this season every time a decent team puts us through a few phases I feel its inevitable we'll concede.

Overall you've got some good points and I'm not going to defend the Ulster and Edinburgh results. At the same time while there may not have been huge blow outs last season Connacht were nilled in three provincial games and against Biarritz, possibly one more? I forget. I could forgive the Ulster one but after that it was too many.

In the end its swings and roundabouts, the only thing that is quite clear cut is our (ie Park's) kicking has been way below subpar this year and that's cost badly in a number of games.

I do feel we're notably more competitive than last season simply because we've twice as many lbp's as last year.

Borders no.2 wrote: -106 (which is more likely to disimprove than improve) compared to -64 in terms of scoring difference. 6 wins (max 7) compared to 8 + 1 draw last season.

to be honest, we'd need to look at the graph of how much we shipped early in the season compared to the latter half to get a real idea of how much progress, if any, was made. But conceding 40-50 points more over 22 games for a team that no longer has a defence coach isn't really that bad a stat. It doesn't mean we haven't gone backwards, but it means some perspective is needed.

We've scored 37 tries already this season compared to 32 in total last year. And we've scored 336 points in 20 games compared to 358 in 2012/13.

We've allowed as many points now as we did at the end of last season, so that's not good, because it will obviously change unless we shutout our final two teams. For anyone who needs to know, Connacht have a single shutout in Celtic League history, in the very first season in 2001 against Caerphilly.

The danger with any stat is cherry picking. We can all find results that support the positives or negatives. End of the day, though, the question is are we better off? And I'm afraid the answer to that, so far this season, is between "barely" and "nope", but considering new coaches and a loss of a defence coach, we've done not too bad. Doesn't mean I'm happy, though.

At times like this I often stop and wonder what Faruk must be feeling.

Speaking of LBPs, let go back to Eric's first season in charge. His mantra was no matter if you were losing, just keep going at at least get a losing bonus, because if you're within 7 near the end you've always a chance of sneaking it, and if you don't at least you don't got home empty handed.

And when Eric took over Connacht was LBP central. Seven LBPs which could have been wins if we only had a kicker. Enter Dan Parks, the clutch kicker, so get us over the edge. But it just hasn't worked. In Eric's last season we had only one more win, but even fewer LBPs (3). Now look at us, 6 LBPs is more or less Eric's debut season figure, exactly the thing Dan (and the rest) were supposed to convert into wins, but this season our kicking percentages were worthy of an U16 league.

Never mind a defence coach, we need someone who can either kick, or teach players to kick.