I'll be awaiting the injury update this week with baited breath.
Went through the euro squad list with swift4prez and wp_rathead in the pub in Cardiff and ticked off the injuries and by our reckoning we don't have a 23 for Newcastle. Admittedly we'd all had a few beers so will have to have another look at it when the injury list is in but we'll be relying on a few guys returning ...

EDIT: Just saw Accidentally Onside's more sober and coherent list on the Newcastle thread - maybe it's not as bad as we thought.

I agree that at times I was shouting at the telly about a lack of support for runners, but we have to remember that the squad has been put through the wringer. Not an excuse, we should have won that match in the first half, but worth bearing in mind. The lads are a few weeks away from a rest yet, so we badly need our injury situation to start to clear up.

Friday was so disappointing for so many reasons, that game was lost by our own doing, well before the injury crisis started to unfold.

It was lost last week with the win over Munster, that emotional relief from breaking the hoo doo, that almost perfect performance, the standards, and the intensity would have been near impossible to replicate let alone get over 50% of them. And I say that with no disrespect to the players and coaching team, it's human nature.

But with that said we played patches of good rugby. Cardiff are a poor team, and Connacht let themselves get dragged down to their level. There was a lack of intensity (I hate that term) but you could see it one of runners and receiving the ball static. The subtlety in the passing was gone ship along in the forwards instead of the depth pass to really do damage. The ball spread across the back line but sometimes very little imagination. It was disappointing. Yet we were never put away but we never pulled away such was the standard of the match. As if no one really wanted to outright win it.

Injuries then played a part and the single most important loss IMO was Ronaldson there's a saying “you don't know what you've got till it's gone” well we lost a rudder with his injury. Guidance everyone can look to. I don't like picking on players but I'd say there's still people wondering where Carty is. Anonymous for huge chunks and it showed. Bundee was first receiver for too often. Marmion may have rectified that but we'll never really know. Just hopefully the long term injury list doesn't balloon because of this.

In a sport based in momentum there was 21 scrums on Friday that's one almost every 4 minutes 14 of which came from Connacht (18 knock ons in total by Connacht). Connacht dominated almost every aspect of the game according to stats but the one above will almost guarantee you won't win or put a challenge to the opposition. Handing back possession time and time again is a recipe disaster.

As a team questions need to be asked. Not all is doom and gloom muldowney, Aki, Connolly, played well Parata and Robb did a job but over all we were poor.

I'll not give out about poor decisions as I'm sure you could find a few the other way. But to me Carty had his arm out to wrap. I say that in the sense if that's a tackle on the hip or chest his right arm would be the same. But we wouldn't have been there if Bundee being taken out in the air gets spotted. (See above about momentum)

I am of the opinion that Muldoon isn't a great communicator. He's a leader and a great Captain in that sense but I think he gets on the wrong side of referees, berates doesn't chat. Whines not questions. And by the time he's cooled down enough to deal with the ref the damage is done. He should really take a leaf out of Jamie Heaslips book always jogging lines to have a chat and making sure the ref knows he's listening and asking questions so he's learning how the ref is interpreting things. This way decisions have less chance of going against you.

As a Connacht fan I was more disappointed in the manner of the loss than the loss itself. I have seen this team develop grow and strengthen. And now I expect a standard. They are reaching a bar which they fell well short of on Friday. I'm looking to the Euro matches for wins nothing fancy get players back playing and look to Ulster at home.

Watching Newcastle too, they produce absolutely nothing; except box-kicks and mauls. The real hindering of confidence would be losing against them

Newcastle's Six just got penalized for a no arms tackle almost exactly like Carty's (although he put his head in a better position). Maybe this is something the ref's have been told to focus on since the world cup?

And Scarlets go top with a late win over Treviso.....

We could/should have won seeing the 1st half, but could/should have lost by a wider margin for the 7 reasons I highlighted. So all in all ...

Ulster is the real decider, I've been convinced of this for a long time
They are lower in confidence than we are, concerned by injuries as we are (Iain Henderson, Darren Cave, Peter Nelson and Dan Tuohy prob out), and they're playing Toulouse twice before us, and Munster home the week just after.
This is a game we should won. Front up, rise up!!!

PS : I can't help but ardently desire to watch "the battle of the midfield monsters" Robb vs McCloskey : 220 kg running full-speed toward each other :woohoo:

connachta wrote:

sea_point wrote: A game lost by Connacht rather than won by Cardiff IMO, the LBP a poor compensation for all the effort. The outcomes could be very costly in terms of the rest of our season due to the combination of the injuries and the potential knock to confidence. .

Sorry Sea-point but I disagree with that part

1) the statistics aren't perfectly relevant, we statistically lost the Munster game
2) For exemple IMO we were dominant for line-breaks but that's all. Dominated defensively and offensively in the contact/intensity, and was pretty tight game for scrums, lineouts (not contested but not straight) and breakdowns
3) finishing the game with 4 U-21 and 3 injured players on the pitch
4) playing a whole half without a scrummie
5) ref was poor for both side
6) defensive maul still a nightmare
7) Muldoon and Muldowney obviously tired after Munster match

So yes a draw was possible and maybe deserved, but all in all a BP I would have taken from the start, for a team which showed character. Could have been worse too around the 55th min when Patchell made it 20-13. The team didn't collapsed and the confidence isn't hindered too much. My opinion.

To be fair when it went to 20-13 I thought we might get nothing as we were scrambling for any kind of foothold in the 2nd half at that stage but taken as a whole this is a game we should have won even with the unforeseen difficulties encountered. We didn't need to do anything particularly special to open up Cardiff but at times over-elaboration and poor options cost us.

Both defeats this year have been frustrating as we could and should have won both. Glasgow in the end was probably 2 points gained as we left ourselves far too much to do but last night was definitely 3 or even 4 dropped in my eyes.

Runs like we had always come to an end. We are in a tough position with injuries but how we react in the next match is important for the course the season will take from here.

And we had fun about it but this time it's true :
Nearly all our best 23 was out of this game :

1) Buck
2) McCartney
3) White
4) Dillane
5) Browne
6) Heenan
7) Nepia
8 ) Masterson
9) Marmion (I include him despite the 2 min he played)
10) McGinty
11) Niyi
12) McSharry
13) Api
14) Poolman
15) Henshaw

16) Delahunt
17) JP
18) ?
19) Marshall
20) ?
21) Cooney
22) Ronaldson (I include him despite the 10 min he played)
23) Carr

So, the fact that the rest of our squad was able to earn smth from a decent and hungry Cardiff team is a valuable performance per se...

sea_point wrote: A game lost by Connacht rather than won by Cardiff IMO, the LBP a poor compensation for all the effort. The outcomes could be very costly in terms of the rest of our season due to the combination of the injuries and the potential knock to confidence. .

Sorry Sea-point but I disagree with that part

1) the statistics aren't perfectly relevant, we statistically lost the Munster game
2) For exemple IMO we were dominant for line-breaks but that's all. Dominated defensively and offensively in the contact/intensity, and was pretty tight game for scrums, lineouts (not contested but not straight) and breakdowns
3) finishing the game with 4 U-21 and 3 injured players on the pitch
4) playing a whole half without a scrummie
5) ref was poor for both side
6) defensive maul still a nightmare
7) Muldoon and Muldowney obviously tired after Munster match

So yes a draw was possible and maybe deserved, but all in all a BP I would have taken from the start, for a team which showed character. Could have been worse too around the 55th min when Patchell made it 20-13. The team didn't collapsed and the confidence isn't hindered too much. My opinion.

A game lost by Connacht rather than won by Cardiff IMO, the LBP a poor compensation for all the effort. The outcomes could be very costly in terms of the rest of our season due to the combination of the injuries and the potential knock to confidence.

We made more errors and poor decisions last night than in any game I've seen this season. Cardiff are an average side, but with a few decent players who are low on confidence and were there for the taking if we could have been even 5-10% more accurate.

We absolutely dominated possession and territory and pretty much every statistic available , but errors and plain bad decision making killed any real momentum. For me Porter and Carty are a poor combination, Jack was anonymous for most of the game, and for me a ten should be demanding the ball all the time and structuring how we play.

The penalty we won near the end of the game where he kicked to touch but didn't even make the Cardiff 22, and his near tackle on Vosawa tat was so poor the referee thought it was no arms summed up his night. Just totally unconvincing. Maybe Porter inside was the real issue, because his distribution was overall poor especially his decision making in the Red Zone, he didn't seem to be aware of his options when we were pressing the Cardiff line and took some poor options which put other under pressure.Yes he took his try well, but I feel he cost us a couple of opportunities as well..

How many times did we have players that were supposed to be carriers playing the pivot role, it should happen only a few times a game, they should be available to carry and nine and ten should be bursting their arses to get there and telling them to get the feck out from the ruck

The most worrying thing from last night is injuries, how many more players have we lost Roux, Marmion, Ronaldson and McKeon and Porter who also went off with an injury also potentially and that is on top of pre-existing Unavailable/Injured: Tom McCartney, Denis Buckley, JP Cooney, Andrew Browne, Ben Marshall, Nepia Fox-Matamua, Jake Heenan, Eoghan Masterson, John Cooney, AJ MacGinty*, Fionn Carr, Danie Poolman, Robbie Henshaw, Conor Finn, Api Pewhairangi.

Very worrying indeed...

Shelflife wrote: Frustrating night, I felt we left it behind in the first half, another try then would have sealed the deal . The tactic of Muldowney at second receiver for a lot of the second half cost us a lot of ground at times, I thought we didn't attack the gain line enough in the second half but clearly the loss of our two scrum halves and then our most effective winger would have made a big difference to tactics.

There was one or two ref decisions that were baffling but the pen reversal was simply that he called it the wrong way the first time, he thought the AR called a pen for green not against them, Cartys was correct, it was a no arm tackle, the arm on the Cardiff players leg was after the hit, my initial reaction was it was a pen against jack , but I thought there was a cheap shot on Mul at the same breakdown that could easily have reversed the Carty decision but he never looked at it. He didn't cost us the game in any shape or form .

Given the injury toll it was heartening to see them play their game all the way to the end and nearly Nick it, I think a draw would have been a fair result. It's the same as we got last year, one point so we are still on track.

Heads up and let's hope that the injury list starts to shorten soon.

I'd agree with your summation of the game, the ref didn't cost us the game but there were some contentious calls.

The reversal of the penalty leading up to Cardiff's 2nd try seemed fair enough. I didn't see it but I assumed from the reaction of the crowd we had pulled it out of the scrum and it should have been a Cardiff penalty. However, following on from that Vosawai was laying into Heffernan on the ground which the officials chose to ignore completely.

To be fair, Carty isn't the greatest tackler in the world but its very hard to wrap your arms around with Vosawai leading with the shoulder. Common sense has to prevail sometimes over the letter of the law or the game will descend into complete farce. We are seeing more and more needless involvement from TMOs and it is not helping the spectacle.

Frustrating night, I felt we left it behind in the first half, another try then would have sealed the deal . The tactic of Muldowney at second receiver for a lot of the second half cost us a lot of ground at times, I thought we didn't attack the gain line enough in the second half but clearly the loss of our two scrum halves and then our most effective winger would have made a big difference to tactics.

There was one or two ref decisions that were baffling but the pen reversal was simply that he called it the wrong way the first time, he thought the AR called a pen for green not against them, Cartys was correct, it was a no arm tackle, the arm on the Cardiff players leg was after the hit, my initial reaction was it was a pen against jack , but I thought there was a cheap shot on Mul at the same breakdown that could easily have reversed the Carty decision but he never looked at it. He didn't cost us the game in any shape or form .

Given the injury toll it was heartening to see them play their game all the way to the end and nearly Nick it, I think a draw would have been a fair result. It's the same as we got last year, one point so we are still on track.

Heads up and let's hope that the injury list starts to shorten soon.

Most of the time I don't get around to blogging about games until a few days after the fact, but this time I'm getting in ahead of the pack if anyone would like to read:

phatguerilla.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/ca...immediate-aftermath/

Now its yous that are copying me, muhahaha!! :evil:

Imo Connacht was the better side over the 80 minutes, no point on dwelling on dreadful ref decisions, we just have to get on with it. Hopefully the injuries are not too bad, we can't take much more, academy guys were really worth their weight tonight, looks like we'll need them over the next 6-8 weeks.

Big moment for Robb, McSharry, Marshall, O'Brien and Blade. They are so talented that I'm still confident. Has to be short-term injuries.