Here's some video I took at the Munster game. Took a while to put it up but it shows the bad decision by the ref in relation to the penalty try!

We lost the game all by ourselves, the ref made mistakes but he made them to both teams. His penalty try was way out of order as after watching it again on TV it is pretty clear the scrum went sideways and the only reason it went sides ways was because Munster were boring in on the hooker. That is a touch judges fault not the ref as he was on the other side. It is easy to have a go at George for not grounding the ball, but I bet you if you asked him he would have swore it was grounded and judging by how far he slid it would have been hard for him to know it wasn't.

We learnt nothing from the loss away in France, same tactics used and you know what, any team that plays against us probably spend about 10 mins with there video guy to know how we play. Time and time again on Saturday and most matches this year when we were in the red zone the blindside was not only undefended it was wide open for a scrumhalf dummy and spin or the full back coming back a pace. This is something any decent coach would see and would/should and work on in training. When EE goes, we really need a clear out of team management and coaches and to start again and get a scrum coach to work on our props.

It is very hard to be a connacht fan as we have far more lows then highs. we will all trot back out for the next home game and probably walk away feeling the same as we did on Saturday unless someone in the coaching staff smell the coffee.

Not sure I agree with the maul incident . On TV, ref clearly told Marmion to use it, but it started moving again and he ignored him. After whistle, Parks came over to ask why, and ref said he told 9 to use it, Parks turned to Marmion whose face was like a child caught in the cookie jar. Just inexperience, if the ref tells you to use it, right or wrong, just use it.

Thanks salmson but I read in an earlier post that he made comments about the ref also

Ger C wrote: What did EE say in the post match interview, I was at the game and didnt record the match

With thanks to thescore.ie:

Connacht coach Eric Elwood told TG4 after the match that he was “devastated” by the home loss.

“We had our chances and, unfortunately, didn’t take them and paid the ultimate price,” he said.

Speaking about the scoring chances, Elwood reflected:

"Technically, [Fetu'u] could have put the ball in his left hand and fended with his right hand. George just had to put the ball down. Dan also missed right in front of the sticks.”

What did EE say in the post match interview, I was at the game and didnt record the match

After thinking about the game and trying to shake my hangover I've come to this conclusion about the game. Anytime you throw away 2 tries like that and miss that penalty you don't deserve to win a game

ill add that id like to have a ref outside the irfu reffing interpro's. even them scottish refs, baldy and ginger.

that most of been the quietest ive ever seen the sportsground. early kickoff dont help one bit. surprised how little munster supporters were around. there usually great, apart from the 3 in the clan bar who thought they were singing but in fact were shouting.

same thing again vs munster. losing when we should of won.

people saying its not the refs fault when clearly it is. our maul only stopped once going forward and he blew up, when he did blow up we had a bit of speed and munster wasnt stopping us. it happened right in front of me.
penalty try from the first scrum when the ball was still 5metres out?
thats worse then the penalty try that ulster got vs leinster the night before,
ref kept giving munster alot of warning but didnt do anything about it. munsters yellow was fair. you get a yellow for high tackle.
munster were always finding themself on the wrong side and took there time getting away.

yes poor from george not grounding the ball but if you look at trys scored sometime players dont ground it but the get away with it, if he wasnt near the line, he would of gotten away with it.

our game plan was again shit. i think that henshaws garryowens do work as we put the ball in the right area of the pitch, some of parks kicks were very aimless. middle of the pitch. twice at restarts he kicked the ball dead. he did it at kickoff and by that i knew he wouldnt have a good game.

got to give credit to keatley keeping up with fetuu when he was running to the line. he had a good game

I like George, he plays with honesty and heart; but even when he had slid off the pitch he still hadn't grounded the ball; if a schoolboy did that he would be roasted.
Equally, while JHW threw well; how often over recent years do we throw poor lineouts at crucial times, Cronin, Flavin, ER etc. Connacht lose out as all these little details accumulate. We have too many marginal defeats. It's not accidental; imo the management have always valued heart and passion before attention to the details. We need both. Hopefully the new coaching set up will start to instil the discipline thats required.

Sad to see the usual retreat to blaming the ref before facing reality in so many posts. The ref had nothing to do with us losing and had a pretty decent game and favoured no one. Certainly performed better than a number of our key players.

Salmson has just mentioned what I was about to say. Our half backs made two unforgivable errors. I wouldn't be too harsh on Parks with the penalty he missed, but the first two he got in the first half were miskicks and he got away with it.

Overall we didn't play badly. Not a lot of unforced errors considering the conditions, just the ones we made were very costly. And seemed to me there was less missed tackles that usual. On the other side, Munster were just clinical. Very comfortable under the high ball, rock solid defensively and had Keatley to win it for them.

I don't see why everyone's fussing about the scrum. We traded equally there (though granted you'd expect better against Munster), and the scrum penalty for Munster that closed out the game was patently wrong; Botha engaged early on the first put-in and dragged the re-set down.

The ref had a poorish night but didn't favour one or other side; our yellow card and the penalty try were softish, but he spent the second half trying to even things up (their card was soft too, and he threatened Archer with the bin for bellyflopping onto his own player at the ruck).

We lost this in 3 mistakes from our halfbacks: First, straight after the penalty try Parks overcooked his kickoff; scrum back, penalty, 4 point lead becomes 7. Then at the start of the second half Marmion failed to play a ball that had come out of the ruck and we conceded another penalty, bringing Munsters haul while we ere down to 14 men to 13 of the 16 points they scored - watched it back on TV last night and the ref was right about this. Finally Parks missed penalty meant we had to go for a try instead of 3 points at the end.

The pack did very well, Munster were pinned back for the whole of the second half, but Parks and Marmion didn't hit their usual high standards last night.

connachtexile wrote: The lesson I got from this game and it's one we heard before is that we need more beef in the pack. It's great saying we're mobile but if we constantly give away penalties because of scrum infringements then that's no good to us.

Buckley and loughs just cannot be on at the same time if we hope to get the upper hand in the scrum, perhaps having white and wilks starting was a gamble to beat up Munsters pack before bringing on the lighter more mobile props to speed up the last quarter. IMO it was misguided, or optimistic at best, while its important to have a strong scrum it rarely translates into points in itself unless there is a scrum on the opposition try line. Like the high ball it's not a high return on investment strategy. Along with that other teams have quality heavier props on the bench who can come on and will pummel bucks and loughs, so a dominant scrum will start to concede points and metres in the final 20-30 minutes. I like both Buckley and Loughney but they're just not heavy enough to be paired together successfully.

connachtexile wrote: The lesson I got from this game and it's one we heard before is that we need more beef in the pack. It's great saying we're mobile but if we constantly give away penalties because of scrum infringements then that's no good to us.

Its a fair point. IMO we scrummed quite well while Nathan White was on imo but Ronan Loughney had a torrid time. I'd have Denis Buckley starting ahead of Brett Wilkinson at present. Having said that with Swift and McCarthy missing against Edinburgh we saw the advantage Edinburgh had in terms of power for most of the game. With Swift coming towards the end and McCarthy off we have issues in terms of bulk in the 2nd row. I have major time for the likes of Kearney but physically he's still developing. Browne and McKeown are bulking up but still have a bit of a way to go. At 7 JOC or Willie Falloon are good players for us but aren't big men physically.

We need a battle hardened pack and its not quite there at the moment and if reinforcements aren't got particularly in the 2nd row it'll make life difficult for us.

I'd be the first to say if I thought we didn't deserve to win that, not saying we played fantastic but despite the refs input we still should have won if parks didn't miss in front of posts and naoupu kept his head..Munster didn't look like scoring at all bar the time they got a penalty try which was clearly boring in on tv replay crazy decision. Yes we should expect better there was some very poor play at times but there is nothing wrong with pointing out that the ref was totally inept and he should be called to account for it this is his profession lets not forget. You won't see coaches criticize a ref after a game normally but Eric was so annoyed he couldn't help it that alone says something.

The lesson I got from this game and it's one we heard before is that we need more beef in the pack. It's great saying we're mobile but if we constantly give away penalties because of scrum infringements then that's no good to us.