Newport is a fairly miserable place to go to watch your rugby, a small city in the industrial South of Wales. It's overshadowed and overlooked frequently by having the Welsh capital Cardiff only half and hour away by train and rugby visitors tend to stay in Cardiff rather than sample the "delights" of a Friday or Saturday night in Newport. The weather on visits to Rodney Parade seems to frequently change, from dark and cold to cold and wet to dark and wet.

One bright note on another such evening was Connacht's support in Newport which (usually only myself, and my other half if I can persuade her to travel) was boosted by 3000% with the travelling Galwegians RFC in town to fuflil a fixture against Newport RFC, and in their midst and accross a pitch splattered by heavy driving rain Connacht's own legendary Eddie the Eagle could be seen leadin the away support. It was great to see a decent number of away supporters at a Connacht Magners league game in the UK especially as they came in good voice and had brought a number of Connacht Rugby flags with them to add colour to yet another dark Welsh evening.

On he pitch we had new boy Troy Nathan starting in Connacht's achilles heal position this season. My most obvious observation would be that Nathan perhaps needs to lose about a stone in weight for the start of next season, at six foot and carrying 15 1/2 stone he's too heavy to allow him to be as fleet of body as he needs to be in such a pivotal role...

Despite the result the Dragons were by far the better team over the eighty minutes we dominated for perhaps 1/4 of the game and but for several last ditch tackles after the Dragons had shredded our defence and some poor decision making on their part we would be looking at another 0 points in our season stats...

A lot of credit for the win goes to Conor McPhillips who save Connacht's bacon on at least five occasions, sadly it doesn't change the fact that he has a huge amount to learn still if he is to be the scrum-half that Connacht need. At least last night he seemed to be aware that he needed to move the ball away from the breakdown a lot quicker. He was deservedy awarded the official Magners Man of the Match for his efforts.

There wasn't much play of note in the first half. A very heavy deluge of rain from 17.30 up to the 19.10 kick-off certainly didn't help the handling of players. Much like the previous week in Ravenhill the few moments of skill on show were provided by Connacht after they conceded and early penalty to the Dragons converted by Ceri Sweeny. The less said about Newport's Try the better as Connacht's usually excellent lineout had a major malfunction on their own five metre line.

After soaking up a huge amount of Dragons pressure in the second half as they tried to close out the game Connacht were awarded a turnover penalty and Gav Duffy kicked us to within five metres of the welsh line, a catch and drive and several rucks later the Dragons defence parted like the Red Sea to let the perpetually industrious Johnny O'Connor touch down less than ten metres form the posts. Andy Dunne slotted the conversion and we managed to retain possesion comfortably enough to close out the last five minutes.

Newport Gwent Dragons -- M Thomas; G Wyatt, P Emerick, R Gomer-Davies, R Mustoe; C Sweeney, A Williams; A Black, S Jones, R Thomas; A Jones, L Charteris; C Charvis (C), J Bearman, M Owen. Reps: B Daly for Jones (52); A Hall for A Jones (58); J Ringer for Charvis (69); K Morgan for M Thomas (69); D Pattison for Black, (76).

Connacht -- G Duffy; M Mostyn, M Deane, K Matthews, D Riordan; T Nathan, C McPhillips; B Wilkinson, A Flavin, R Loughney; D Gannon, A Farley (C); J Muldoon, J O'Connor, C Rigney. Reps -- D Yapp for Deane, inj. (34); J Fogarty for Flavin (51); B McGovern for Loughney (54); A Dunne for Nathan (64); Loughney for Wilkinson (65); L Casserly for McGovern, (69).

Ref -- N Patterson (Scotland). 

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