Magners League  -

05-03-10

Radio has been a wonderful communication tool over the years, and for the Connacht fan abroad it forms a critical part of follwing our beloved province during the season. The demise of Setanta in the UK means that coverage of Connacht is at best patchy. Tonight because Setanta 1 is not viewable in the UK, I was forced to try stay up to date with the updates provided by Knockon.ie's Rob Murphy for Galway Bay FM. For SKY viewers in the UK; Setanta is not on the EPG so you can't record the broadcasts. So I found myself waiting up for Setanta to replay the game on their Setanta Ireland station, kicking off at 1.30am.

First, there's been a few on our forum who were overly dismissive about Glasgow because they were missing some of their 6N players. Both Glasgow and Edinburgh have a lot more depth in recent years since the demise of Borders, and that is reflected by the fact that even during the 6N period they can call on 7 or 8 recent internationals in their match dday squads. This Glasgow team played some decent rugby, were sharp and used the ball well with intelligent kicks and retained the ball well and their error count was minimal.

We also played well enough with or without the ball, but didn't play any territorial game at all and lacked a bit of incision in attack. Keats had one of his poorer games, he kicked his goals and one or two decent breaks but he didn't impose himself on the game. As the home team we should have been dictating where on the pitch the game was being played and ramping up the pressure on the visiting team.

All of Glasgow's points came from our indiscipline, three penalties given away for stupid infringements, first try conceded when McCarthy was stupidly/harshly binned for holding on (penalty yes ref, but yellow are you sure?It was on halfway not our own try line..) and they used the extra man well to create an overlap.

Watching the replay of the game I think the penalty and sin-binning against Glasgow cost us the match, the extra points lulled us into a false sense of security and we switched off at a crucial time. Critically and infuriatingly (because he had a good game overall) Troy somehow allowed himself to get sucked in off his wing into midfield which created the space for Glasgow to squeeze Eddie into the right corner.

So yet again Connacht somehow manage to avoid winning a very winnable game against decent enough opposition.

The referee James Jones was another to have an indifferent night, some questionable decisions from another of the new breed of referees who cannot seem to allow games to flow without interjecting constantly. I'm sure I'm not alone  in wishing there was more focus on getting the key  decisions right rather than blowing up every minor infringement. Effective Touch Judges would also be a novel addition to Magners League games. Still a small crumb for Connacht Supporters must be that unlike poor Ulster we didn't end up with a Scottish whistler on the night. Then we would certainly be lamenting the loss of more than two points.

Looking back to Elwood's comments during the announcement of his appointment, he referred to bigger attendances being critical to ensure a successful future for Connacht. He also referred to changing the mindset of the team, and to me on the evidence again tonight this is the absolutely the critical issue for us. Resolve this weakness in our make-up and regular wins and bigger attendances will surely follow.

CONNACHT: Duffy; Nathan, Matthews, Wynne, Carr; Keatley, F Murphy; Wilkinson, Cronin, Hagan, Swift, McCarthy, Muldoon, O'Connor, Naoupu.

Replacements: Morris for Hagan (41 mins), Upton for Swift (58 mins), McComish for O'Connor (62 mins). Not used: Flavin, Nikora, O'Loughlin, Tuohy. Sinbin: McCarthy (42 mins)

GLASGOW: Stortoni; Shaw, Murchie, Horne, van der Merwe; Jackson, McMillan; Welsh, Hall, Kalman, Barker, Turner, Eddie, Forrester, Vernon.

Replacements: Tkachuk for Kalman, Gray for Barker (both 53 mins), O'Hare for van der Merwe, Gregor for Jackson (both 65 mins), Kinloch for Shaw (72 mins). Not used: Thomson, Fusaro. Sinbin: Forrester (75 mins).

Referee: James Jones (WRFU).

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