salmson wrote: That's a good point. He got badly done in this channel for the first try away to Biarritz, for example.

Follow on questions for those more knowledgeable than I:

1) Isn't 13 just about the hardest defensive position on the pitch? Or is that just in general play (end of the defensive line) rather than from set plays?

2) Wouldn't it make more sense to put him out on the wing altogether (a la Ian Humphries)?

It should vary from game to game and opposition to opposition, if say we're defending from our 10 metres in and we're playing Ulster with Bowe (or against Edinburgh and Visser) on the wing then I wouldn't particularly want Parks anywhere near there trying to defend the inevitable crossfield kick....

Moving McSharry to 10 makes some sense to close off that channel and Parks has no problem with line speed in a wider channel, but it's the big contact closer in where he struggles...

That's a good point. He got badly done in this channel for the first try away to Biarritz, for example.

Follow on questions for those more knowledgeable than I:

1) Isn't 13 just about the hardest defensive position on the pitch? Or is that just in general play (end of the defensive line) rather than from set plays?

2) Wouldn't it make more sense to put him out on the wing altogether (a la Ian Humphries)?

I think bringing in Parks has changed the way we defend. If you've watched enough games you'll have noticed he lines out in set piece defending at 13, so that usually McSharry is at 10 and can make the 1st up tackle. Opposition teams will notice this and spread the ball and then target Parks, who lets be honest is equally as good at tackling as ROG.

For all his stats of goal kicking and DGs it goes both ways.

Nice bit of analysis there Ummm. The inconsistency in relation to scoring tries rings home.

One thing, this season we have a very respectable Points Against column - 345 to date, as opposed to 433 last season. I think our defence is less of a concern than our attack. For all the talk of Connachts 'young exciting backs' that is trotted out everywhere, I think our backline is our weakness. Take a look at these figure I cobbled together, one stands out as way out of the ordinary.

Tries scored this season in Connacht Rabo & HEC Games

Competition	Connacht Forwards	Connacht Backs	Opposition Forwards	Opposition Backs
Rabo	14	13	13*	20
HEC	3	2	3	10
Total	17	15	16	30

* A penney for anyone who can guess what team scored a third of the total no of tries scored by opposition forwards in the Rabo

Where as opposition backlines score roughly twice as many tries against us as their forwards do, our forwards have outscored our backs this season by my count. The 2:1 backs to forwards is much more in line with IRB stats for World cups and 6 Nations. So while our backs aren't conceding anymore than their fair hare of tries, they are not delivering their fair share of tries. Our forwards are matching the opposition.

So in the Clan Player of the Year discussions I copped a bit of flak for having a couple of negative comments on Parks. Whatever the rights or wrongs of my opinion, and hey everyone has opinions, it got me thinking about what I wanted to see.

It was pointed out to me that I was maybe holding Parks to a higher standard than others, and I think that's a very valid point. But there's also a very good reason for that, he's an experienced international, so of course you have higher expectations. When he was signed we were all excited about a proven goalkicker joining the team, to turn all those LBPs we got last year into wins.

It hasn't worked out, and the more I look at the stats the more I realise that's not Parks' fault. Here's why:

Our try scoring is all over the place as is the ability to defend our goal line. Our defence last year kept us in games, but the same can't be said for this year.

In 22 Pro12 games last year we allowed 3 or more tries twice, this season we've allowed teams to put 3 or more past us 6 times.

We failed to score a try in 5 Pro12 games, this year that has happened 7 times in 18 matches. In games where we do score tries we're averaging 2.4 tries a game, which is more than last years 1.5.

It would seem that last year we were consistent in our efforts, we would get one or two tries in a game - we only ever once got 3. This year we've had 3 matches where we've scored 3 tries and one where we scored 5.

If you look at the table we're 3 tries away from our total from last year and we've 4 games left. But we're also only two tries away from our 'tries against' total.

So what does this mean? In short, we just haven't had the tight games we were expecting Parks to turn into victories. While we had 7 LBPs last year that we would have hoped would have been swapped for victories at the moment we haven't had a burst of victories on the back off Parks boot, because we haven't been putting him into the position where he could have given us the victories.

Whoever Lam gets in next year to help will have his work cut out for him with sorting out our defence, for sure. But for the last 4 remaining games at least the charts suggest that our defence is getting better, so hopefully we can finally see Parks get his chance to do what he was brought in