Prop Morris is hit with three week ban ahead of clash with Dragons

Date Published: 02-Oct-2009

CIARAN TIERNEY

PROP Robbie Morris begins a three week ban as Connacht Rugby bid to pick up the pieces from last weekend’s bitterly disappointing defeat at home to Ulster when they travel to Rodney Parade to take on the Newport Gwent Dragons tomorrow (4.30PM).
Morris attended an IRFU disciplinary hearing on Tuesday night at which a citing for an alleged 65th minute strike on Ulster’s Thomas Anderson was upheld, following video footage and oral evidence against the player.
Connacht had already implemented their own internal suspension against Morris, who is now banned until October 20, but so flat was the overall performance last Friday that coach Michael Bradley will have a lot more on his mind ahead of the Dragons game.
Bradley is expected to make wholesale changes in the wake of the 30-6 defeat to his side’s rivals for the last Heineken Cup place, a result which seems to have left his side with little to play for going into the fifth game of the campaign.
It might be early days in terms of the Magners League, but two hugely disappointing performances in three games have left Connacht – as usual – rooted to the foot of the table.
Sandwiched between the 62-13 defeat at Edinburgh and last weekend’s humiliation at the hands of Ulster was the spirited 18-16 win over Cardiff at the Sportsground, but even that sequence of results shows how inconsistent Bradley’s men have become.
The Cardiff win saw a large and expectant crowd turn up for the Ulster showdown, but the supporters left the College Road venue convinced that Bradley’s men simply were not good enough to haul themselves off the foot of the table.
Bradley has been awaiting fitness tests on Ian Keatley, Mike McComish, and Jamie Hagan before naming his starting XV, but flanker Ray Ofisa (illness) is a definite absentee.
After a spirited first half, Dragons lost 27-3 to Munster in Cork last weekend. This will be their fourth Magners League game against an Irish province, having already accounted for Ulster first time out (23-6) and gone down 23-14 to Leinster at the RDS.
The Dragons showed limitations in the scrum against Munster, but lie four points ahead of tomorrow’s visitors as they registered a 30-19 win over the Glasgow Warriors in their last home game.
With two wins from four games, they are hardly as inconsistent as a Connacht side who may hand starting roles to the likes of Conor O’Loughlin, Mike McCarthy, Michael Swift, and Liam Bibo in response to the desperately poor showing against Ulster.
So flat was the performance last weekend that it is going to take something really special from Connacht to lift the post-Ulster blues. And that’s why the Dragons should start as firm favourites tomorrow.
Connacht (squad): L. Bibo, A. Browne, F. Carr, S. Cronin, G. Duffy, A. Flavin, J. Hagan, C. Higgins, I. Keatley, R. Loughney, K. Matthews, M. McCarthy, M. McComish, J. Muldoon, D. Murphy, F. Murphy, T. Nathan, M. Nikora, J. O’Connor, C. O’Loughlin, M. Swift, N. Ta’auso, B. Tuohy, B. Upton, B. Wilkinson, A. Wynne.