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who is he??????
picture with ?????

Claffey is huge at 6'5" and 125kg at his age he will put on a bit more beef.

to steal a phrase used by Foley recently 'it's about supporting the team not the players'. we may not have signed a marquee player but we have so many more options now in the majority of positions than we did 5 years ago. Pat emphasised all year that every player adds value to the team, it also means all players in the squad have a desire to improve and step in when needed

as I said before we have some big lumps in our academy

All this optimism is cheering me up. Maybe I am fretting over nothing.

How and ever they go I'll be supporting them anyway.

For me. I have decent expectations of top 4 this season. Minimum top 6.

While I appreciate that we 'appear' weaker than last season in some positions, I am not sure I see many other team in the pro-12 kicking on considerably from last season.

I guess that is the big question for me, how will the other teams respond? I still think we have the winning of Munster for example even though they should improve.. I expect our team to be much better and a lot will come down to injuries. Bealham, Dillane, Heenan, Buckley should be bloody good this season and the backline too. I also think we will see some emergence from our academy, with my money on Gallagher in with Dillane.

Maybe i am too optimistic!!!!!!!

EvoGeo wrote: Great summation borders. I am not as optimistic as you unfortunately and hope I'm wrong. I really don't see how our attacking game works without a ball playing second row and I don't think we have one? Maybe Browne can step up or marshal but I've not seen any evidence of it.

Really hope I'm wrong but I think we could struggle for top 6 even this year. Maybe we were spoiled and over achieved last season but I was really hoping we could build on last year and actually put together something that compete for top 4/ top 6 on a yearly basis. I just don't feel we've taken advantage like we should have.

Maybe it is just as you say the value is not there but with the outflow of talent from SA due to the quota rules I'd have thought we could have done something like munster did?

I'm inclined to agree with you evogeo and then maybe not. AJ had a fairly innocuous start at Connacht, aly learnt his role, finlay another who has really impressed but grew into it. So Connacht has a game plan that players can learn. Huge credit goes to Dave Ellis and no reason to belief that now the processes are in place that the players cannot replicate these processes next year. And as connachta says on Muldoon's comments, Connacht is refining these processes further. The preseason game against Montpellier adds further optimism to the equation. So not all doom and gloom. Pat has achieved the unachievable with processes and some new new players. Tom, Jake and bundee have been great signings but then sob, Masterson and niyi have developed through the Connacht system. So keep the faith

John Muldoon just has talked on "off the ball". Interesting piece in which he highlights how aware they are other teams will study Connacht strategy, and then, the need to improve and slightly change it

Great summation borders. I am not as optimistic as you unfortunately and hope I'm wrong. I really don't see how our attacking game works without a ball playing second row and I don't think we have one? Maybe Browne can step up or marshal but I've not seen any evidence of it.

Really hope I'm wrong but I think we could struggle for top 6 even this year. Maybe we were spoiled and over achieved last season but I was really hoping we could build on last year and actually put together something that compete for top 4/ top 6 on a yearly basis. I just don't feel we've taken advantage like we should have.

Maybe it is just as you say the value is not there but with the outflow of talent from SA due to the quota rules I'd have thought we could have done something like munster did?

Heenan said on Twitter he's fine

The summer has been a bit disappointing but looking at the other Pro 12 clubs there have been a handful of really eye catching signings. Scarlets have added a couple of decent signings but apart from that no team has strengthened hugely. If we won the Pro 12 a few years back there might have been an opportunity to add a couple of big names but the hard reality is that the money isn't in the Pro 12. Look at Glasgow winning it 15 months ago. They still lost 4 or 5 big names. Munster and Leinster haven't made any big name foreign signings. Piutau was lined up for Ulster last year and Coetzee is good signing but Nick Williams is going the other way.

There can be no dressing up that losing the likes of Muldowney, McGinty and Henshaw is a blow. Rodney to a lesser degree. The incoming signings will im sure improve us in certain areas but overall we certainly haven't added the quality we'd have liked. There is one or two areas we look a bit short but overall i'm happy enough with most areas of our squad. There is no point throwing money around for the sake of it if there is no value in the market for us. 2nd row is an area we'd like to have improved but Munster are adding a South African who is relatively unknown and Leinster added Ian Nagle. Options don't look to be plentiful.

I still think there is scope for improvement in this squad and having had the experience of winning the league I'd hope we can now push on further. I look back at last season and even though we won the league there were at least 5 other games in both competitions that we should have won but didn't. In the final we did so much perfectly but there were plenty of games earlier in the season where we self-destructed or gave away cheap points in a game we were controlling to give the opposition some impetus. I'd hope Pat and the management would use the likes of the Scarlets, Brive, Grenoble, Treviso etc away games as a stick to beat the lads with over pre-season to show we are league winners but we still have scope for improvement.

My aim for this season would be Top 6 as our basic target and hopefully push for Top 4 again but even coming close to matching last seasons exploits is a big ask. Pat is setting the bar high which I like but we're there to be shot at this season.

Fair enough, it's fine to hope and be optimistic. Personally I'm deflated and disappointed going into the season due to our recruitment or lack of so far. What happened to all the cv's landing on Pat's desk?

salmson wrote: Not saying we'll win it. Just pointing out there's great value in the Champions Cup bet as opposed to the league one: 100/1 is a ludicrous price given 2 teams will progress to the Q/Fs from our group, and Zebre obviously won't be one of them.

I have them at 100 to 1, got 20€ on them, with Paddy Power.
Got them at 10/1 for Pro12, 30€.

Not expecting to win Champions Cup, but why not hope.

Fair enough Sampson.

I guess I was just venting as I have been hoping and waiting for that one big signing that we should have been able to bring in. When I wrongly thought you were thinking everything was looking sweet and that we were on for a similar season to last season I probably over reacted a bit.

Not saying we'll win it. Just pointing out there's great value in the Champions Cup bet as opposed to the league one: 100/1 is a ludicrous price given 2 teams will progress to the Q/Fs from our group, and Zebre obviously won't be one of them.

As to the rest of your post, we only lost one coach this off-season, and I'm not sure where all this money you're printing came from. We sold about 8K semi tickets at 25 quid a pop (but we had to share that with Glasgow I'm sure), and got a new and presumably better sponsorship deal. Few hundred grand extra in the pot, best case scenario. This isn't soccer you know!

Champions cup? Hold on tonto, we're looking a lot weaker the start of this season compared with last season. The one place where we might have strengthened is 10 but with how well AJ went second half of last season that is not guaranteed either.

I'm so disappointed we got no marquee player with all the extra money we should have this year, an intelligent ball playing lock in his prime had to have been the top target and we didn't get one.

I'm also seriously disappointed on the coaching side as losing two experienced southern hemisphere coaches and replacing with Irish ones is only going to bring us in one direction also.

Last of all I'm seriously disappointed with all of the above as it seriously diminishes out chances of holding onto the wonderful bundee aki and Pat Lam beyond the end of their contracts. We have just had a once in a lifetime set of circumstances which should have made us the most attractive proposition from a recruitment point of view and as far as I am concerned we have blown it massively.

Champions League each way bet at anything from 66/1 to 100/1 is the value bet on Connacht, given 2 of ourselves, Wasps and Toulouse will be in the last eight.