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Connacht taught harsh London lesson

ECC
By Rob Murphy @ Knock.ie
January 19 2009
The players are blameless for this. They won't feel that way but the incredible reality to emerge from Saturday's unmerciful massacre at the Madejsky Stadium is that nothing was left out on the field by a battling but overawed second string Connacht.
London Irish 75
Connacht 5

By Rob Murphy

One might think that such a result is a clear reflection of Connacht's poor strength in depth but is there really a team anywhere in Europe that could rest twelve front liners and expect anything other than a hammering at the home of the Guinness Premiership leaders?

Maybe Michael Bradley is right, maybe a win next week against Dax reserves will justify the ends and vindication will be bestowed on the Connacht head coach. Maybe such hammerings don't matter in the greater scheme of things when Connacht are coming out with some of the big home performances they have managed in this bizarre season.

Lets not harp on about the scoreline or some of depressing facts to emerge from this non-contest and leave all that for the final words. Instead lets stress one key point. No player who played on Saturday should be judged on his performance. It would be incredibly unfair to make an assessment of their ability since they were all slotted into a side with no previous pedigree to build on.

Six or seven changes would have allowed the likes of Andrew Browne, Daniel Riordan and John Hearty to merge with the current first choice players and demonstrate their ability within the current Connacht system. However with only three regular starters retained -namely Andrew Farley (pictured), Colm Rigney and Troy Nathan - this was a completely new team with no discernable structure or system to adapt too.

London Irish have a lethal backline at the best of times but this was just laughably easy for them. Defensively, Connacht were all at sea against some of the best backs currently playing in Europe. Toypsy Ojo, Peter Hewat, Seilala Mapusua and Shane Geraghty were dancing through the cover with ease.

If this group of players had any hope of surviving in this contest and being successful on their damage limitation exercise, they needed to start well and frustrate their opponents in the first quarter. By the fourth minute things weren't looking so good as Steffon Armitage danced through the cover close to the posts to score the first try.

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