From listening to the Radio, how in the hell has no Ospreys player seen yellow. 11 penalties conceded by them.

Game freaking on! After having no real idea how to cross the try line the second half has sounded absolutely fantastic. I think Pat's half time talk must have been a rocket!

19-22, try Poolman.Game on.

The front 5 seem to be motoring.

If it weren't for galwaybayfm I would never have known that the Uk will be releasing coins to celebrate the birth of some child. Great public service there.
Seriously though I wonder how much it would cost to set up a connacht (clan) online radio service for games.

Ah Galway Bay FM, now that we've been told where the cake sales are on (which apparently take news priority over earthquakes on the Subcontinent), it's over to Corpse Countdown. Family flowers only.

3-7, sounds like Ronaldson has no problem with kicking confidence.

rossie wrote: I don't know what the significance of Clarke stat of hitting 15 trucks in first half is?!

Maybe the fact that he hit 1/3 of our offensive rucks in the first half, the ball came back sharpish from all but one of those, and wasn't there in the second? Faloon and the props were also in the top few at the breakdown in the first 40, once they went off/tired we couldn't hold on to the ball in the second half.

rossie wrote: The only significance of the breakdown in 1st half is 4/5 holding on pens and 2/3 turnovers.

The significance of our breakdown travails was massively overegged. 4 out of our first 5 possessions we turned over, but we were still 7-0 up. For the rest of the first half we traded evenly on turnovers (2 vs 2), and we had a good setpiece platform, so the reasons we failed to kick on fall into the Same-Old-Sh1t bucket:

Only one ball carrier in the pack (Heenan, I think you called this out the day the team came out).

No control at flyhalf. Not only did Parks miss a gimme, he also turned down another penalty (then fluffed the kick to touch) and tried another cross kick to nowhere when we needed to hold on to the ball.

Bad hands/trying stuff that wasn't on. Duffy overran the ball carrier 3 times (one knockon, one forward pass, one penalty against the ballcarrier). White passed straight into touch. The ball was dropped (backwards, thankfully) on 3 occasions.

You might have guessed I'm not overly confident about today but sure we live in hope anyway. It's not like previous form counts that much for a team that can lose to Treviso, Edinburgh and Cardiff at home, then turn around and beat Leinster, Ospreys and Biarritz.

I don't know what the significance of Clarke stat of hitting 15 trucks in first half is?!

The only significance of the breakdown in 1st half is 4/5 holding on pens and 2/3 turnovers.

I always live in hope ! It's the only way, we will not win the league or Heineken Cup, but we will always give of our best. As long as that happens you have to be happy. The lads all do their best, we do our best to support them. Maybe stupidly but I always think that we can win every game ! I know we won't, but always think that we can.

If we dont win by 50 points, we will have failed......

Personally I am fearful for tomorrow. I used to feel at home that we could beat the majority of teams on our day but I just don't see that with us at present. Its very early days for the new management and we have some new players but I think given the squad we have the performances in the first three games haven't been anywhere near up to scratch full stop. There will always be excuses if you go looking for them but we need to bring a lot more to the table tomorrow. There were some positive signs against Ulster but all in all it was depressing following on from another less than convincing performance in Cardiff.

I'm not expecting a win but if Ospreys go back home with a win at least let them have earned it.

A weaker Connacht on the paper beat Quins Biarritz and Leinster, so I assume on a one-match perpective, there's no reason to be more pessimistic than we were one or two years ago

Everyone: debate the point not the poster.

Everyone here is very much entitled to their opinion and to express it. If you think that their view is pessimistic then debate it, but do not dismiss them as pessimists or imply that they are not as good a supporter as others because of it. We will have no good debate here unless people give their honest opinions and feel comfortable doing that.

Personally I don't think that we'll beat Ospreys but I live in hope as always.

think the negative chapps need to get dr eva to tell em to "cop on"!!!!!!!!!!!! lol

well i think there are reasons for optimism:

7-5 lead at half time with clarke on board - he hit 15 rucks in that time!
heenan
ronaldson offers more than parks
and this is a chance for henry to stake his claim

good bench options in naoupou, carr and parks to close out game

yes eternal optimism !!!!

Well that's just defeatist and you're obviously not allowed on here...

:huh:

fwiw I'd like to see a more coherent gameplan and after that the score is less important long term - a good performance by our new signings would be as much of a result as a win. Based on form a losing bonus point would be a reasonable result for connacht, but we all know for better or worse form means very little with connacht.

swift4prez wrote:

tomsauce2000 wrote: It's too early to be very pessimistic about Lam's era

here here! end of.

3 games and gone, 1 win, 1 away loss and 1 home loss vs the finalist and table toppers from last year.
even after 14 losses in a row 20 months ago, people werent throwing in the towel 24 hours before kickoff.
FFS lads and cop on, if people are so negative go back and ''support'' man utd or barcelona in the pub, sure they win most of the time.

pat has changed or game plan, which has been awful for along time, aimless kicking, now its running style, early days and people have lost hope!!??

how about these people, show up 40mins before kickoff tomorrow, clap the players coming out for the warm up and when its quiet in the stands, start singing and others might join in.

fucking hell; we have great weather, why are so many people down? cheer up

Sorry Swifty, but I'm entitled to my opinion. And I'm not positive about this game against very good opposition and for good reason. I haven't lost hope, I just have an opinion about this one game.

And if someone else thinks this means I should be moderated out of this board for my opinions then anything I've said has already been overtaken on the "saying stupidly outrageous things" list.

I'm not throwing in a towel for the season. I'm looking at our next opposition and saying they're way better than us on current form. A loss to Ulster wasn't a loss to last years finalists, it was a loss to a poor Ulster team we all fancied ourselves against. A team missing its internationals and firing blanks. A team that lost away to Dragons is exactly the kind of time we should expect to beat and we didn't because of poor play, bad decisions, awful defence and no invention.

So sorry, everyone, if I don't come on here every week and wave pom-poms and twirl my nipple tassels, sometimes the outlook is bleak. There's a difference between optimism and being blind.

Do I want us to win, of course I f**king do. Do I think we'll win? No. Tough. Get over it, everyone. And if we win the cheerleaders will have their moment of berating everyone else for being negative, but if we lose I won't be coming on here saying "I told you so" because that's dickish.