Lam lets fly at officials but Connacht have only themselves to blame for letting win slip away

Cardiff 17

Connacht 16

The Pro12 competition is a lot better these days, every game seems to matter that little bit more this season. Friday’s tussle at the Arms Park was a fine example, Cardiff won the game with a last minute try that won’t be forgotten by the club’s supporters for quite some time. That same score, Connacht players and management crestfallen at the sight of three vital points slipping through their hands.

The sense of despair soon turned to outrage towards the officials, as two dreadful calls cost Connacht dearly during the final flurry. A period of play that started with a baffling decision by the visitors to kick the ball down field to the Blues with 90 seconds remaining, finished 68 penalty-interrupted phases later with a try for the home side.

Those four penalties during the nine minutes of desperation helped keep Cardiff alive in the contest as for most of the attack, they were aimlessly going back and forth across the field with Connacht making tackle after tackle.

The 84th minute penalty in the sequence was the most disputed one, and Pat Lam’s ire was such that he decided to take a laptop into the press conference to clearly illustrate how bad a call it was. Touch judge Leighton Hodges spotted hands in a non-existent ruck, having missed a blatant knock-on, and the fact that no ruck had formed, and called the penalty.

A ridiculous call, neatly illustrated by Lam’s unusual decision to bring some video evidence to the media scrum more than half an hour after the game had ended. Yet, the coach’s clever work in that regard might well have been undone by the rest of the press conference, as he then raised a previous incident involving Welsh official Hodges that seemed out of context with events that had transpired on the evening.

At this point we really need to get to grips with the entire reality of the game rather than the reality of those last few minutes. The Connacht team and management were right to be fuming about a couple of the final decisions. The standard of officiating at a key point was pathetic at best, referee Lloyd Linton and the much maligned Hodges made calls that were below an acceptable standard.

Yet in the previous 80 minutes, their officiating was hardly the talking point in a game where Connacht’s first-half dominance had not been reflected on the scoreboard. Rodney Ah You was enjoying arguably his best ever game in a Connacht shirt, dominating at scrum time and making some big hits in broken play. His scrum work was wreaking havoc.

Connacht led 10-3 at the break thanks to a Jake Heenan try from the back of a rampaging maul but they should have had more, three fruitless visits to the home 22 proved costly. The most notable of them came at the very end when Connacht had won a free-kick from a Cardiff scrum five metres from the home line.

Those who rested easy for a second safe in the knowledge that Connacht would take the scrum in that situation and cause untold damage watched in horror as the otherwise on-song George Naoupu had a moment to forget, taking a quick tap and go while the rest of his team were standing still. It unsurprisingly ended in a turnover.

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