Dodgy officiating aside, I feel the better team still won. Connacht were a little flat after a nice run of games to get their season untracked and Leinster wisely played to their strengths after weathering the first quarter of the match. Disappointing because it felt like they had a really good chance for a win and even with Leinster dominating much of the time they were just a score away from making a proper contest of it.

I'm surprised they song so well with all those silver spoons in their gobs.......
This is banter just in case the fun police are patrolling today

Conn Not 65 wrote: Cronin's forward pass was so obvious , how the officials missed it is beyond. The only thing that was worse , was the D4's singing Molly Malone. It made my skin crawl . Now cliché time! Today is a new day- we have lost before - we put it behind us - we move on ... and most important of all....We are Connacht !

I find that "come on you boys in blue" way more irritating. They sung it quite a bit on Saturday.

Cronin's forward pass was so obvious , how the officials missed it is beyond. The only thing that was worse , was the D4's singing Molly Malone. It made my skin crawl . Now cliché time! Today is a new day- we have lost before - we put it behind us - we move on ... and most important of all....We are Connacht !

I really think the officials missing the forward pass from Cronin right before Leinster's first try was the big turning point in the game. The touch judge was right on line with the play so how he was unable to notice that the ball was thrown from behind the 5 metre line to in front of it was just ridiculous. If we had been able to stay only 3 points behind at that point it could have totally changed how the rest of the game went. Obvious forward passes directly before tries should never be missed anymore with such easy access to multiple camera angles of these plays via the TMO

phatguerilla wrote:
eta: That lineout when Roux won the ball and nagle or mccarthy was lying on our side, and the ref gave them the penalty? Did my head in, and a lot of others I'm sure, and as far as a single decision can cost you the match, that was the one.

Had to laugh when I heard Lacey give that one. "Contest is fair" he says, then sees Roux on the ground with the ball and Leinster players all over him, gives a penalty to Leinster. They scored a try a couple mins later.

In the first half I thought Leinster had learned nothing from the final, but they started to figure out the ref, as others pointed out started to gain the advantage at the ruck when they realized certain things weren't going to get called. Offside line was abused to cut off width and then we seemed to play into their hands even further by hitting one up runners who ran for tackles rather than away. Scrum was a massive bonus to them and must have drained our forwards quite a bit - another ref might have carded one of our front row on a different day. At the same time they weren't as good and we weren't as bad as the scoreline suggests, a couple of forward passes called against us incorrectly and a couple not called against them had a massive impact on the final score.

Losing Ronaldson was massive but also need to question the wisdom of not benching SOL who has been a Ronaldson-lite for us since last season. Bundee is either not 100% (obvious from the bandages) or just hasn't come off the bench in so long that he's forgotten what that's like, but didn't improve things the way we would have expected. SOL has covered wing in the past so could have replaced either Bundee or more likely Ili and we might have been better able to deal with the Ronaldson injury. Arguably kicked too much in the first half to try and force Leinster back early but then didn't kick enough in the second half when they were defending very high and narrow.

eta: That lineout when Roux won the ball and nagle or mccarthy was lying on our side, and the ref gave them the penalty? Did my head in, and a lot of others I'm sure, and as far as a single decision can cost you the match, that was the one.

From looking back at the game Roanaldson is so important to us and brings the best out of Jack. I thought leinsters defense was immense and credit has to be given to them , our wingers were as quiet as they have being so far this season and I also think that was down to Leinster. Over all the better team won on the night we just take it on the chin and move on!

Borders no.2 wrote: Nice try from Shane Delahunt to finish but Leinster's defence snuffed us out fairly easily being honest and they dominated at scrum time as you'd expect. For me Ronaldson was a big loss in what he could give us but after the first 15 minutes or so which were in the main very good we really lost our way after that and never looked like recovering the situation. On to Newport now. We just have to win our next 3 now to keep touch before Europe resumes.

Now I do like to bet from time to time. I definitely don't mind losing a bet. But as you say that was a sobering result and performance. And the difference with and without Ronaldson so far this season describes our results so I agree on that. To be honest I'm finding it hard to find fault. Pretty much everybody did what they usually do. We simply were beaten by a better team. And it hurts me to say that A LOT

Nice try from Shane Delahunt to finish but Leinster's defence snuffed us out fairly easily being honest and they dominated at scrum time as you'd expect. For me Ronaldson was a big loss in what he could give us but after the first 15 minutes or so which were in the main very good we really lost our way after that and never looked like recovering the situation. On to Newport now. We just have to win our next 3 now to keep touch before Europe resumes.

This has been a sobering experience.

#width

Leinster are winning everything on the ground. CONNACHT need clean the ball way quicker if they are going to win.

We have no with since ronaldson went off.
Hopefully we can get him back on the pitch

second half. connacht to rip these leinster lads to pieces. god are they boring

I think that because the way Marmion plays doesn't suit Sexton the D4 media label him as a bad scrum-half, they also notice Carty's goal kicking issues much more than Sexton's, but with Ronaldson kicking that'll be irrelevant.
Comparing players in isolation rarely works, especially when the two teams play to very different game plans.

Agree with you on Jack, typical Leinster superiority complex they're labelling the half back competition evens, but they've had serious troubles getting a working partnership together in that area when Sexton isn't available, and Carberry is extremely raw and will be challenged in a different way today than he was by Treviso. :whistle: