sea_point wrote:

connachtexile wrote: Playing devil's advocate here who who people drop for the next game? Barring injuries of course. Should guys like Macca, Fetu, Griffin and TOH be dropped from the squad entirely or should they be given a chance to redeem themselves?

If anything the team lacked cohesiveness from running out pretty much development sides in the pre-season games. I suspect Eric will keep faith with them (barring more injuries) and expect them to improve significantly against Zebre ...

I have now seen both Pre-season games and was at the sportsground on Friday, in my oppinion and it's only my oppinion I think that the starting fifteen against Exeter would have beaten that Cardiff Blues team on friday (as they were also poor).I don't see the point of putting out a develpment side pre-season and not selecting players who stepped up to the mark and played well.
Dave Moore played well against Exeter as did Brown and Grace as did a few others. But will there be changes for Zebra ??? I don't think so as most of these guys are on big bucks and money talks. (I hope I am wrong, and Eric has the wherewithal to select on performences and not reputation).

If Poolman is ready then I'd say get him at least on the bench and see what he can do.

connachtexile wrote: Playing devil's advocate here who who people drop for the next game? Barring injuries of course. Should guys like Macca, Fetu, Griffin and TOH be dropped from the squad entirely or should they be given a chance to redeem themselves?

If anything the team lacked cohesiveness from running out pretty much development sides in the pre-season games. I suspect Eric will keep faith with them (barring more injuries) and expect them to improve significantly against Zebre ...

Playing devil's advocate here who who people drop for the next game? Barring injuries of course. Should guys like Macca, Fetu, Griffin and TOH be dropped from the squad entirely or should they be given a chance to redeem themselves?

theCulk wrote: Swifty, as much of a legend as he is, is just not able to go for the full 80 anymore and he shouldn't be expected to. He looked fit to drop after 65 mins.

Heretic! Crucify him!

No, seriously, you're bang on the money. If we used JOC and Swifty as impact subs we could get another 2 seasons out of them.

After all the dust has settled here's my take on the game:
Positive:
- The scrum
- Good individual perfotmances from Marmion, Faloon and Fafita.

Negatives:
- Poor decision making. Why go for that penalty kick at the end of the 1st half when they should have taken a quick tap.
- Line out was all over the shop. Reynekes throwing isn't good enough.

A few other things irked me. When Griffin went down, he was hobbling around after and clearly in no shape to continue. Why was this let happen. With our line out in a shambles the decisionn was made to take off or hooker and our main line out target and bring on their replacements. This didn't work. Swifty, as much of a legend as he is, is just not able to go for the full 80 anymore and he shouldn't be expected to. He looked fit to drop after 65 mins.

Very, very disappointing performance. The conditions obviously didn't help, and it actually goes to show how far we've come in the last few seasons, as we used to absolutely thrive in weather like that and now it doesn't suit our game at all. There were some extremely poor performances in the backs, Nikora looked like he didn't want to be there and his kicking was terrible. We just kept giving Cardiff the ball with both his and Marmion's pointless Garryowens that weren't chased with any conviction. I know it's difficult to play passing rugby in that weather but the backs never really got going and if there was a game-plan it just disappeared into a litany of errors. Didn't think much of Marmion to be honest, he's a little off this level at the moment and we could really have used Murphy or O'Donuhues experience towards the end. There was a 3 man overlap at one point when we were plugging away at their line and no-one spotted it. Even the usually reliable Duffy seemed to be suffering from headless chicken syndrome, running straight into Flavin for an accidental offside from a good position. Fetu will definitely be targeted with high balls for the rest of the season. The less said about his game the better. Apart from Macca's surprisingly anonymous performance I thought the pack were very good, Buckley especially had a good game and Rodney looked a lot sharper and fitter than last year when he came on. Faloon looks like he will be class for us. Still all credit to Cardiff, they took the few chances they had and defended well against our admittedly lacklustre attacks. Onwards and upwards..

I got there late and missed the Fetu horror show, but the game was there to be won even at 13-0 given the wind. Not sure about the criticism of TOH. The ball didn't come near him, and I'm not sure I'd want a winger chasing garryowens up the centre when the opposition are clearly better at getting the ball quickly out wide.

Marmion did well for a debut. He is not quick enough at moving the ball - takes that irritating two steps before passing, but in the plus side he is no one trick pony - able to steal a few yards or box kick. He needs to improve his distribution, but not bad for a first outing.

Nikora's decision making was very poor at critical times. Poor decision making across the pitch is one of our most consistent flaws, but you really pay for it when the OH makes the wrong call. At either 13-6 or 13-9 we were going through the phases well inside their 22 when Nikora decided to punt it up and over for Griffin to catch inside the try line. Crazy decision and poorly executed too. Gav's decision making and execution wasn't the best either, some lousy kicking away of possession, but magnificent under the high ball.

Griffin wasn't troubled by hamstring from what I saw. He had someone fall awkwardly on him and it twisted his knee, but hopefully he should be ok. Not that he did a lot though.

It was one that shouldn't have been lost that was, and there'll be more of them this winter. We are still missing the killer instinct.

Anyone who turned up for that dross has my sympathies. Sounds like we just hadn't a clue how to control the match, and it's a crying shame Parks wasn't fit. It was precisely those kinds of matches that he was signed.

I'm not going to hang it all on Fets, but he can't be happy with his performance and he did himself no favours. But we've got depth now and Eric needs to send out a message, if you have a shocker you won't be asked to play the week after.

At least they're not ducking the issue:

www.independent.ie/sport/rugby/elwood-br...h-zebre-3217281.html

Borders no.2 wrote: On the night you'd have been talking less than half that attendance at best before the Clan stand was there.

Best first-day turnout I remember pre-Clan was about 1400 against Dragons a few years ago, which rather makes your point.

fatgav wrote: wasn't at the game due to a family engagement, so can't comment on the performance, but Rabo site says attendance was 3869? Weren't we expecting many more?

Yes you'd have hoped for better.

However, to be fair, it was a miserable evening, really steady drizzle, got soaked going to and from the car a few hundred yards down the road, no heavy shower but it made some rain in the 2-3 hours around game time, rain started at a bad time around 4.00.

There was no-one behind either goal (usually you'd have a good sprinking behind bohermore end, even though there was no mini-rugby last evening) or in the small uncovered terraced area (which would usually be relatively full on the greyhounds side.

Also our early season attendances never seem to be as good for whatever reason, as winter draws in generally people start turning their attention to the rugby. I believe a 6 / 6.30 kick off time would be more beneficial but overall you'd expect attendances to increase as the season progresses.

Looking on the positive side of things I remember us playing Ospreys at home on a miserable Friday evening on the first day of the season maybe 4 years ago and there was something like 829 which even at the time was very poor for Connacht.

Its nights like last night the investment in the clan stand pays its way. On the night you'd have been talking less than half that attendance at best before the Clan stand was there.

wasn't at the game due to a family engagement, so can't comment on the performance, but Rabo site says attendance was 3869? Weren't we expecting many more?

Funk It wrote: Think you are only taking the segment of my comment to make it look more sinister.

You quote single sentences from my posts twice (see, we can all do it, the delete button's great ain't it) and then say I'm taking segments of your posts out of context.... no, wait, I'm just wasting my breath here amn't I? :silly: :blink:

Personally I thought that Gavin was a bit ineffectual at FB and as Capt. I'm sure he'll come back into it, but I think that he was sub-par yesterday.
We were totally dominant in the pack, and we failed to hold it in there. There should have been a hell of a lot more mauling from Connacht, where we were marching them back and getting penalties. Line out was a mess as well which should have even more strongly dictated a mauling game from front of line ball. The scrum was immense and yet we opted for a kick into the wind instead of a scrum 5 metres from their line at the end of the first half... baffling. That's what a captain should be controlling.

I thought that Fifita and Henshaw had good games. Devastated to see Griff hobbling again. That boy is continuously being forced into games prematurely. Let's get him fit again.

salmson wrote:

Funk It wrote:

salmson wrote:
From a personnel POV, I don't like the "hang Fetu" thing but a marker has to be set down for what happens when performance is unacceptable.

I think that everyone knows what a dangerous player Fetu is, in the same sense that we knew what an outstanding player Fionn Carr was when his defense used to get called into question (rightly or wrongly). As mentioned, I didn't see the game and I don't think for one second that an under par performance came down to one player.

As for "under par performance came down to one player", you may have pulled that out of your backside but I didn't say it. I named 3 players in relation to kicking, called out Macca and the lineout - the lineout cost us the game, not Fetu, but there is a difference between honest incompetence and going awol - and said the back row didn't pull up any trees.

Calm down let ya. Think you are only taking the segment of my comment to make it look more sinister. I never said you said it, just saying that I'm not blaming him solely for the loss in reference to your "hang Fetu" defense comment.

You might quote me on "blaming him solely" from this reply if that suits against your argument.