If swift feels there is a case then he should definitely follow through on it, the last thing we want is to teach young players that its ok to start that sort of thing.

Agreed. Swifty is no angel but there's a difference between street nous and actively trying to blind someone. He also doesn't strike me as the type that would make an accusation like that unless true.

Devil's Own wrote:

Time for new ideas and new blood in the club to take things to the next level its stagnated at one great performance out of the blue followed by a string of woeful matches that dishearten everyone

Something that struck me last night after I watched the game was that EE should take more gambles. As in throw on young guys if he thinks there going to do the job or play someone out of position if he thinks they can do a job there. We now all know that he's going, so go for broke tactically or selection wise isn't going to get his ass fired! Plus while some of them might fail some might work. Its not going to affect his legacy with the faithful.

I was very disappointing by connacht at the match, totally lacked any invention or cutting edge..parks place kicking both before the game and during it was terrible. griffen was poor as was poolman. henshaw, marmion, jhw, white, and naoupu were the only show ups.

Even though it was a sell out i think i saw about 3 connacht supporters the worst thing was i had a fellow galway man shouting for leinster behind me and another neutral!..made me ashamed of my home county talk about turncoats :sick:.. one good thing was i thought the referee was decent.
Time for new ideas and new blood in the club to take things to the next level its stagnated at one great performance out of the blue followed by a string of woeful matches that dishearten everyone

If swift feels there is a case then he should definitely follow through on it, the last thing we want is to teach young players that its ok to start that sort of thing.

A friend of mine who was at the game said there was an accusation of eye-gouging made by Michael Swift against Jack McGrath. Schmidt mentioned it indirectly in his comments saying ''there was some gamemanship on the pitch" will be interested to see if it goes any further. Swifty apparently wasn't happy at all and had a go at the touch judge who missed it.

I thought Marmion looked great. His ability to break, fast ball off the ruck and the fact he can tackle well make him a really good prospect for Connacht and down the road Ireland.
McSharry too looked good. a few line breaks and bloody hard to stop.

I thought Griffin was rusty as hell so hopefully after getting 80 minutes under his belt he'll get back to form pretty fast. Poolman didn't have a great game but overall he's being a great acquisition. Marmion was fantastic.

on a side note i thought lacey did a good job of the reffing

Wanted to mention this as well. The Ref was very good. If anyone saw the Ulster/Munster game yesterday Rolland when there was an attacking scrum gave 4 chances before whistling for a penalty try and Lacey when the first attacking scrum went down near the line brought it up again. It makes Dudley do wrong's decision to whistle for a penalty try to Munster against us after the first bad scrum all the more galling.

columoc wrote: Twice we were penalised extra metres for something being said. Not sure who said what but nowadays it is rare enough; so twice in a game suggests a deeper lack of professionalism. Maybe with EE is going players have switched off to a degree subconsciously??. like Alex Ferguson after he announced his retirement. At this rate the best we can hope for is that Zebre don't catch us, but they come to Galway twice and on our form they may get something.

i think it goes back further than that. maybe not in terms of backchat etc but this has been a bad team capable of good things for at least a season and a half now.( as opposed to a good team underperforming).

why? maybe they just arent good enough to perform consistantly, i dont know.

columoc wrote: Twice we were penalised extra metres for something being said. Not sure who said what but nowadays it is rare enough; so twice in a game suggests a deeper lack of professionalism. Maybe with EE is going players have switched off to a degree subconsciously??. like Alex Ferguson after he announced his retirement. At this rate the best we can hope for is that Zebre don't catch us, but they come to Galway twice and on our form they may get something.

First one was for mouthing, second was for Reynecke kicking the ball away after a penalty was awarded. The referee also told him to calm down at scrum time and could (and probably should) have sent him to the bin for creaming a Leinster player in the air.

Thouroughly mindless cameo. Other standout performances (in a bad way) were Griffin - three handling errors, a kicking error and a skip pass to a touch judge - and JOC, who didn't have the legs for the Leinster backrow.

Twice we were penalised extra metres for something being said. Not sure who said what but nowadays it is rare enough; so twice in a game suggests a deeper lack of professionalism. Maybe with EE is going players have switched off to a degree subconsciously??. like Alex Ferguson after he announced his retirement. At this rate the best we can hope for is that Zebre don't catch us, but they come to Galway twice and on our form they may get something.

The sad thing about a game that we lost 17-0 was that it was there for the taking.

Its the same story again, basic handling mistakes, not protecting the ball at rucks and stupid penalties. Its really not acceptable.

Alot of work has been done off the pitch as regards facitities,funding and supporters, and alot of work has been done with the squad been buily up and acadamy players coming through, id say that the squad is alot stronger this year then last year.

However the skills levels are poor, decision making is only adequate and this fuc&king up and under tactic is brainless.

Our ball handling and ball retention is poor and our first up tackling is poor as well with players getting over the gain line with relative ease virtually every time until we commit more players to the tackle and give the opposition space.

Its very frustrating to watch, its fecking hard to be a supporter at the moment, its like having a hot girlfriend that constantly messes you around.

Im not suggesting for a minute that the players dont care or dont try, but the skills levels are poor and they need to address that and soon and their skills coach needs to look at themselves as well.

This isnt a personal attack on any player or coach ,but a comment from a suppoert who gives a sh*te and cares about the province and who hurts when we watch so many games fall from our grasp when it was there for us.

Seriously pissed off. We have played two average teams in the past week and come away with 1 point. 3rd time we've been nilled this season. Less points than this time last season. 11 points off Treviso.

Soul destroying stuff, started well and took the game to Leinster but too many basic errors (4 or 5 knockons in contact and one pass about 3 ft forward by Griffin to nobody) and that old issue of a good break in behind the defence coming to nothing due to a lack of support. Henshaw and Poolman got in behind on separate occasions but lacked support and the chance was lost. Poolmans chance from Parks cross kick was probably the best and he possibly should have done better but that would be the least of the issues I'd fault us for.

For all our territory we never seriously threatened the Leinster line. I knew after 25 minutes the game was over as when you don't take advantage of that much possession and territory against a good side you have no chance when they get on top.

Leinster took charge then and we gave away a pathetic try that should never happen at this level. Once they get on the front foot you are in trouble. Physically they dominated and our fringe defence was non-existent when they recycled at pace.

Dan Parks once again this evening failed to cover himself in glory and his decision to go for the corner with an extremely kickable penalty at 10-0 with 15 minutes left was inexplicable regardless of what wind there was. There was zero excuse to go for the corner and that's not being wise with hindsight. I remember a similar poor decision against Munster last season where we had them on the rack, got a handy penalty in front of the posts and went for a scrum which we weren't dominating, turned over and 2 minutes later Munster had a try at the other end (10 point lead goes to level pegging).

We fronted up early on and did well on set-pieces in the main but the errors we are making at this level aren't acceptable.

I don't know who the new coach will be. If its King I'm sure he's contracted to Clermont until the end of the season but if its one of the candidates who is available to start they should come in at the end of the HC Group Stages. I don't want to see another season lost to transition. The mistakes we are making should be eradicated in the main on the training ground yet they keep recurring week in week out.

Also regarding Reynecke, I don't doubt his attitude but he's too much of a loose cannon and his lack of discipline cost us coming on again. Time to start looking for a replacement. Swifty took the challenge to Leinster early on but he is waning at this stage. With McCarthy off we seriously need to target at least 2 players of real quality in the 2nd row. Back row needs another ball carrying physical presence. JOC too is coming towards the end.

For all the pretty patterns we weave on occasions we are still in the main relatively predictable and on another day Leinster would have had a couple of intercepts. The play off the scrum towards the end involving Marmion, Parks etc. was fantastic to watch but then to present the ball back and no Connacht player within a mile when the ball was presented, handiest turnover ever ruining some very intricate play.

Also seeing TOH coming on and getting turned over easily on a couple of occasions its increasingly apparent he needs to bulk up.

There has been lots of talk of this that and the other in recent weeks off the field but everyone involved in the Connacht setup needs to have a look at themselves at this stage. The league table is an embarrassment.

Ugh, what a game.

A few thoughts while the game is still fresh;

In several games now Connacht have brought everything required of them for the first 25 minutes but if they are not ahead at that point then the heads drop and they seem to go into themselves. Mentally defeated I guess. There's something wrong there imo.

Related to the above, Connacht cannot control the 'championship minutes' at the end of the first half, costing points and often the win. Unacceptable, concentration needs to happen for the entire game, not just an hour.

I think we really missed Vainikolo tonight as someone who can find a gap out of nowhere, I think the other players were missing him too, thinking of Griffin's pass to the linesman and Marmion kicking ahead in particular were two instances where they might have expected Vaini rushing up to take advantage.

The honeymoon period with Parks is pretty much over imo, at the start of the season he was running the backline with speed and ingenuity, but now it seems that he has become predictable to the opposition already. Marmion's breaks in the second half were an example of what might be needed from Parks (along with a lot of other things obviously), something to keep the opposition on the back foot and keep them guessing.

That's three games so far where we've failed to score once? Parks kick to the corner in the last fifteen minutes was brave but ultimately wrong,I don't want to put the blame on him for this one but I think at this point in the game we didn't have the forwards to do the work required.

Handling errors. For the love of god can we please get this sorted out? I realise it isn't going to happen until next season at this rate, but please please please can the new coach be able to instill a new culture where mistakes like this are finally removed? That along with striking the up and under/aimless garryowens from our collective consciousness is an absolute must.

There were a few positives in fairness I don't want to be completely negative, Marmion was imo fantastic, I'd see him as the best Irish scrum half right now, ok reddan and boss have much more experience but I think he's more than a match for them in every other way.

The defense was really good for the majority of the game, kept mcfadden quiet I thought which is not easy.

Poolman seems like a great acquisition, and Jhw continues to impress.

There are so many good players in this squad but after the first choice 15/20 or so players there's a noticeable decline. Even so I think we could be doing so much better.

i think yee are a bit harsh.

they brought a huge amount of physicality fo 1st 25 or so min but leinster matched it. parks kicked well out of hand and poor feet from poolman cost a potential try with 2 v 1 in the footrace. parks had a poor miss for 3 as well. we ran out of steam imo after that and we conceded 7 softly. how 3 defenders couldnt keep madigan out is beyond me and sums up this team. too many lapses in concentration.
in 2nd half we again started well but their bench made a difference as half went on. poor decision not to take 3 pts by parks at 10-0 imo and the pressure built for 2nd try.

positives were the scrum, defence and marmion. back row also battled hard and griffin, poolman and henshaw had their moments. lineout was ok until changes but no better.

negatives- heads dropped after 1st try and with them the intensity. handling is still a huge concern. id like to see more pick and go from pack to keep defence line honest. imo it will help re knock ons and turn overs.

on a side note i thought lacey did a good job of the reffing and bhane byrne was a big addition to the tg4 commentry esp for those of us whos gaeilge isnt as good as it should be.

Unacceptable, simple as

Can't convert pressure into points, which has been our achilles heals for years.

Didn't bring a level of physicality we needed to and something we don't seem to do on the road

Couldn't put more than 3 phases together without a knock on

When Connacht are good they're brilliant. When they're awful they look like tonight. It's so frustrating. On a side note, I'm now very glad Eric is leaving because there's something clearly wrong with the coaching when they can't finish. Can you imagine them putting together all those phases like Leinster did for Ross' try? They'd do 3 and then balls it up. A right coach with all those talented youngsters will kick them into gear

pinky wrote: Leinster website confirmed it's a sell out. I'll just have to see if I can pick up a ticket around Ballsbridge.

Keep an eye on Twitter, Leinster season ticket holders unable to attend offering tickets...

leinsterrugby‏@leinsterrugby
Tonight's match is sold out.
Tickets will not be available at the gate #sellout #bluearmy
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TheCaterers‏@TheCaterers
One adult and one childs ticket going for tonight's leinster match DM meet if interested. Can't log into my @leinsterrugby account