Brilliant Parks guides Connacht to win in wretched conditions

Date Published: 06-Nov-2012

Connacht 18

Treviso 3

Rob Murphy at the Sportsground

There is at least one turkey like this every season for Connacht at the Sportsground. One horrendous game of rugby littered with mistakes, devoid of anything you could call quality and bearing little resemblance to the professional side of the game.

However this latest offering at a wet and windy Sportsground was different for one simple reason: Connacht won. In fact, moreover they won without ever really looking like they might lose. Conditions played a factor in this messy encounter and we don’t want to understate that wasn’t the whole story by any means.

In the past, sides like Borders and Aironi and many other second-string outfits from other nations have come here, slugged it out and quite often embarrassed Connacht. Not this time.

Connacht teams have never been capable really imposing their gameplan on inferior opposition and that hasn’t really changed in 16 years of professional rugby but Eric Elwood’s trump card for dealing with this problem is Dan Parks.

We’re in danger of putting the Australian-born Scottish international on an unrealistic pedestal, but he alone was the difference between the sides, he put direction on a rambling home side, he chipped away at the scoreboard while both sides floundered, and then he made the first try.

Treviso left 14 front liners at home – sure they won here last year, but that was their first XV, this was a side that could have lost by 50 had Connacht started the game with the kind of accuracy and intensity that they brought to the previous home encounters with Harlequins and Leinster.

All over the world, teams vary the levels of intensity from game to game so there is no point cribbing about the reduction for this one, Elwood and his management team have found a way around such problems with their new number 10, and his presence in the jersey will be essential if this team is to progress this season.

By the time Gavin Duffy had come off the bench to mark his return from a two month injury lay-off to score a try with his first touch, Connacht had sealed a third win and jumped two places to eighth in the table, just a couple of points behind the Cardiff Blues.

Their defence is ranked joint fourth in the league, they are hard to breakdown now after a patchy start to the season and they are starting to get some home wins on the board. This is all progress.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.