Benji wrote: I hope someday soon they learn how to close out these match. And dont even start on the missed kicks

How about all those missed kicks . We would have been out of sight . To be honest my biggest concern is how all these losses are are impacting on the brains of the players. Poor performances tend to extend with poor results. Its fairly clear and obvious that the players are going through a crisis of confidence. Some of the play at the weekend displayed as much. Need the win against Eni Sei to start the healing process

I hope someday soon they learn how to close out these match. And dont even start on the missed kicks

You have to take into account that we should use (fingers crossed) the best lineup since November against Scarlets,
except n°10 it should be just classy

1) Buckley (with gametime gained against Brive and Enisei)
2) McCartney (full-power after 3 games since comeback)
3) White (fresh and rested)
4) Dillane (boosted by Irish call-up)
5) Muldowney (rested against Enisei)
6) Muldoon (better than ever)
7) Heenan (full-power after a month since comeback)
8 ) Masterson (quite preserved during Challenge Cup)
9) Marmion (rested as we speak)
10) Liability but on a good day Carty, McGinty Ronaldson are ok
11) Heals (better than ever)
12) Aki (some regularity in his performances)
13) Henshaw (the name says it all)
14) Poolman (Solid, could even be better with gametime gained against Brive and Enisei)
15) TOH (some regularity in his performances)

I know, individualities don't automatically make a team but still contribute a lot to it, with a home support added in the mix

PS: Scarlets had nothing to play for in Paris, but still put their ful-team and it ended 64-14. They'll be moraly hit more than we should be ..

To be honest a big part of the reason Brive won was they knew they were limited and didn't really try and play a running game. They had a good scrum and a good kicking game, played the game in good areas and that was all we needed as they let us then make our own mistakes. Our kicking game in open play quite apart from the missed kicks at goal was awful. A lot of net losses on kicking exchanges, a number of kicks blocked down, at least 4 or 5 kicks going out on the full (some with a distance to spare).

I wouldn't share the optimism on the lineout, I thought while we caused Brive a few problems we were very predicable. Stats can be deceiving, we won a few of our own but it was often backfoot scrappy ball which is nearly worse than losing the lineout.

Brive played for territory for the most part and let us make our own mistakes. The progress in our skill set under Pat Lam is undoubted but the danger of playing the game we are playing is that it is high risk and involves high levels of skill and concentration and when it all goes pear-shaped and everyone is making stupid mistakes you need to be able to go back to the basics of playing for territory. Our decision making after finally getting control of the game at 12-13 was inexplicable. Restarts after we score a try have dogged us for as long as I can remember. There is a lesson in that, gather, work a position to clear your lines and don't give the opposition a chance of responding straight away.

phatguerilla wrote:
Muldoon was excellent, there were a few raised eyebrows about him at 8 but that was his best game of the season imo. The problem is we can't seem to get more than 8 or 9 players playing well in any one game lately. Mul, Muldowney, Dillane, McCartney, Healy, Parata, for me were all good, but then good performers of the last couple of weeks like TOH went missing for the most part.

An awful lot of players there look like they need a rest, and imo Blade should be our 2nd/3rd choice SH, Porter just doesn't have what it takes to control a game from 9 and I don't trust his passing style, everyone else in the team have improved their skills but he still seems to sling his arms across his body wildly and often inaccurately.

Fully agree with that
No panick :
there are many positive points in that game.

We ran with the ball in hand far better than Brive
We have beaten 25 defenders they've beaten only 4 (which means a lot about both attack and defence qualities)
The offloads were masterpieces from Connacht overall (including some forward players)
The lineout was much improved and nearly perfect 93% of throws won, 4 stolen to Brive
and only 4 tackles missed in the whole game!!

Once again even with an average kicking game, we would have won it. That's just a specific mental issue (stop knocking-on on the tryline, stop conceeding penalties at the death, clearing under pressure and kicking to the post). Otherwise players are good, team is good.

Oh no...I've a feeling its The Nightmare of Seasons Past (if I count back it'll be just to depressing) ...it was all going so well ,we were the darling of the sporting press and were doing everything right...its Ground Hog Day but no ones laughing. Dreams of top 5 and Champions Cup & Challange Cup glory rapidly fading away.....

There were times throughout the match when it seemed like Brive were ready to pull ahead and I would have taken a lbp, but then to lose like that at the end was a double sucker punch.

Muldoon was excellent, there were a few raised eyebrows about him at 8 but that was his best game of the season imo. The problem is we can't seem to get more than 8 or 9 players playing well in any one game lately. Mul, Muldowney, Dillane, McCartney, Healy, Parata, for me were all good, but then good performers of the last couple of weeks like TOH went missing for the most part.

An awful lot of players there look like they need a rest, and imo Blade should be our 2nd/3rd choice SH, Porter just doesn't have what it takes to control a game from 9 and I don't trust his passing style, everyone else in the team have improved their skills but he still seems to sling his arms across his body wildly and often inaccurately.

Can someone please create a gif of the healy chips? If a Munster or Leinster player did that twitter would go into meltdown.

Being positive, I think we have some big results in us. Reduce the error count, and add a little composure and we'll start getting results again. Some Robbie Henshaw time will help too.

Worst result of the season, no one to blame but ourselves, there is no way that you score 3 tries to nil and not win. Look on the positive side, maybe we have reached our low and it only gets better from here on in.

How many times do we have to say it the kicker is killing us. Totally unreliable every one of them and it will and has killed us in numerous games. Lam has to sort this out fast it breeds nervousness throughout the team.

That was a horror show. To score 3 tries to nil and still lose is beyond belief. You could pick out hundreds of things. Carty will get the blame for his missed conversion as is right but MacGinty missed a similar kick off the earlier conversion. However, at that point despite our poor play we finally have a stranglehold on the game. Straight from that kick off our tactic has to be get the ball back down to half way and start again. Instead we dig a hole for ourselves again. Straight away again after Carty's missed conversion we botch the restart and like Diom said there was no need to attack the scrum, keep it steady, let them have it and we'd have seen out the draw and kept our fate in our own hands.

To me that would have been a straight-forward victory if we did our basics to an acceptable standard. Anytime we put some a few good phases together or stretched them we looked like we'd cut them open.

Extremely frustrated. Some hard work to be done before Scarlets.

That was bizarre. Error strewn from start to finish, with some moments of pure brilliance (if healy got over after those chips it would be up there with the best ever). Missed kicks cost us dearly. So frustrating.

menacethedenis wrote: I thought our days of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory were over. Shocking bad kicking tonight.

isnt that it. absolutely gobsmacked with the utter muck. macginty was horrible followed by jack. jesus . tiernan was shocking. poolman and healy did well. the combination of parata and aki did not work. an utter ball of utter rubbish

Diom wrote: He hardly covered himself in glory though. The ruck was a mess of players balancing on their heads, and two very good mauls from Connacht were clearly ruined by drives from the side. But I agree that we made our own bed tonight.

We were so bad it's hard to get annoyed over some dodgy ref calls

I don't want to single out Jack, but he was terrific last week against Scarlets, possibly his best game ever, but tonight? Awful passes, missed conversions, botched restart. The inconsistency is bewildering.

Evil_g wrote: Absolutely horrific.

New levels of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And no referee decisions to blame today.

He hardly covered himself in glory though. The ruck was a mess of players balancing on their heads, and two very good mauls from Connacht were clearly ruined by drives from the side. But I agree that we made our own bed tonight.