Connacht blow it

Connacht 21

Bennetton Treviso 22

Rob Murphy at Stadio Monigo

FRIDAY’S defeat in Treviso won’t be easy to park because it could easily be classified as embarrassing. Here you had a top four team with a close to 70% win record coming into the game, losing to a struggling Italian outfit which had lost 90% of their games during the campaign.

Just as the rest of the league were beginning to take Connacht’s title challenge seriously, the westerners serve this up and slip right off the radar again. A lower profile might not be a bad thing though.

The processes failed the men in green here in a disjointed chaotic performance. Pat Lam made ten changes, he may well regret some of the selection choices. Not much has changed as a result of the defeat here, a one point win over Glasgow and Connacht have a home semi final, but this was about maintaining momentum and underlining the new culture.

Worse still, when one sees the statistics, Treviso had some good moments but without their strong scrum, they would have been hammered here. The Italian side with just two wins in their previous 26 outings, ran out of gas in the last 20 minutes and their already abject skillset suffered more as a result. It was a case of knock-ons and loose passes galore, but somehow, the rag tag bunch hung on.

Character and determination helped the home side but let’s not overplay that either. Treviso looked set to capitulate during the opening 20 minutes when trailing 14-0 down and offering nothing in attack. Yet the second scrum of the game yielded a huge penalty and a bucket load of momentum. Two tries followed before half time, another after half time and all of a sudden, they led 19-14 coming up to the hour mark

At that point, the game was in the melting pot and the hosts had produced more than enough to suggest they could drive on and win . . . yet Connacht hit back. Lam had kept key components on the bench, Finlay Bealham, Aly Muldowney and John Muldoon made a difference in the forwards, Robbie Henshaw, quite logically, was able to dominate in the backs and suddenly the visitors were on the front foot.

Peter Robb’s try was a brilliant score, Tiernan O’Halloran, Niyi Adeolokun, the electric Fionn Carr and John Cooney and others had a hand in a move that went through five rapid phases across both sides of the field and finished in the corner with the hugely talented tall centre reaching out to score.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.