More late agony for struggling Connacht

Brive 21

Connacht 18

EVERYONE in the Connacht camp will be hoping Saturday night in the French midlands was very much rock bottom for their season. It has to be, otherwise all sorts of problems will emerge and the air of positivity around the westerners will dissipate rapidly.

The hugely impressive start to the campaign by Pat Lam’s men between September and November has created a bit of a cushion and made this current blip in form less season defining as a result. However, they’ve pretty much used up all their wriggle room since the start of December with just a single win in seven outings in all competitions.

In the six encounters leading into this one, the level of performance kept everyone feeling confident but this clash on a cold night at the Stade Domenech brought the first signs of a process breakdown, as they missed out on a clear chance to secure top spot in the pool and possibly guarantee a crucial home quarter final in the process.

As a result of this last gasp defeat at the hands of a pragmatic, well drilled and ruthless Brive side which offered little in the area of creativity and pace, Connacht are now set for another away trip in the last eight of this competition. A bonus point win over Enisei this Saturday will all but certainly secure that but the more alarming scenario is the general downturn in form.

The winning kick from Laranjeira came on 80 minutes, it broke a tie yet another late dagger into Connacht hearts. Ulster’s late try, Shinglers kick for Llanelli and now this. Three times in four games Connacht have watched points slip away in the final five minutes. This has turned into a critical passage in the season for the province and the words of the coach and captain underlined how they weren’t about to downplay the problems.

“That’s probably the worst game we’ve played all season,” said a clearly exasperated Lam outside the dressing room tunnel. “ We are extremely disappointed and gutted. Brive didn’t have to do anything to win that game, we just handed it on a plate to them through our own mistakes.”

Lam also lamented the poor discipline and his captain John Muldoon concurred when he spoke as well. “Too many mistakes, too many inaccuracies.” said Muldoon. “Just poor play which hasn’t been a part of our game for maybe two or three years now. It’s very frustrating, we scored three tries, they scored none. For the second week in a row our indiscipline cost us badly, they scored 21 points from penalties and that shows you that we gave away way too many penalties.”