Tired and broken Connacht suffer humiliating mauling

We had hoped that the days of humiliating hammerings were behind Connacht. After all, it’s barely six weeks ago since they were the talk of European club rugby thanks to that seismic away triumph over Toulouse in the Heineken Cup. Last Saturday at Allianz Park in London, however, Craig Clarke and his overpowered team-mates were butchered in a manner so complete and frightening that it must have done serious damage to the Connacht brand.

Sponsors like to be associated with a winning product and the Western province’s 64-6 trouncing by a ruthless Saracens won’t have gone unnoticed by their financial backers. The team’s fair-day supporters could be blinking too after Saturday’s 11-try rout – by some distance the heaviest defeat suffered by any team in this season’s Heineken Cup – and it’s not going to be easy, either on or off the field, to pick up the pieces in the short term.

Let’s be honest, few really believed that Connacht could pull off another sensational away result in the competition. The heroic victory over Toulouse was not a figment of our imagination and is arguably the province’s greatest single achievement, but their complacent French hosts were also caught unawares – a reality confirmed in the return leg at the Sportsground the following weekend when the visitors easily got their revenge by a 26-point margin.

Ahead of last Saturday’s visit to London, everything was on the line for Connacht. They still had an outside chance of making the Heineken Cup quarter-finals and the positive vibes from the camp suggested that they were really up for what was admittedly a daunting challenge against the English Premiership leaders. In effect, this was the acid test for Connacht. Their cover was blown and Saracens were never going to under-estimate them, ensuring we were going to get a truer reflection of the Westerners’ real worth.

Sadly, despite Connacht holding their own 20 minutes into the contest, what subsequently unfolded made for horrific viewing as the limitations of Pat Lam’s men were routinely and regularly exposed. Some players battled bravely to the end, but the body language and flimsy tackling of others was not what we had come to expect in such a high stakes encounter. The concession of 11 tries tells its own story and only for Charlie Hodgson having a terrible day with the boot – he missed a staggering nine kicks at goal – Saracens could have broken 80 points.

Against that background, it’s hard to credit that England’s top team were actually 6-5 behind midway through the opening-half. The recalled Dan Parks had slotted two penalties while Gavin Duffy’s line break in the opening seconds suggested that Connacht were, at least, going to be competitive. But once Chris Ashton went over for Saracens’ first try, there was an immediate sense of foreboding about what lay ahead for the visitors.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.