Leinster were scheduled to play here in the 2001/02 Heineken Cup, but after two postponements the match was finally played at Headingley.  We do have previous with Ireland’s fourth province though, having met them at the Galway Sportsground in a pre-season friendly last summer.  As over 4,000 packed in to see Jonny Wilkinson’s comeback from injury, four tries from Mathew Tait, Andy Long (2) and Stuart Grimes spoiling Eric Elwood’s 150^th match for the hosts.  The Falcons side all those months ago was:-

J Shaw, T May, J Noon, M Wilkinson, M Stephenson, J Wilkinson, H Charlton, I Peel, M Thompson, M Ward, S Grimes, C Hamilto9n, M McCarthy, P Dowson, C Charvis.  Replacements: A Long, M Hurter, E Williamson, S Sititi, J Grindal, D Walder, M Tait, J Isaacson, E Kalman, L Gross, G Parling, O Phillips, M Mayerhofler, L Dickson.

Connacht are currently bottom of the Celtic League, with their compatriots Ulster, Leinster and Munster occupying the top three positions!  However, with four out of five games remaining being at home and fixtures with Glasgow and the Dragons around them still to come, and four points imminent from a free weekend, they harbour realistic hopes of a Heineken Cup playoff spot.

Our visitors’ last Celtic League match was an 11-9 win at Borders on Friday, with a try from David Muldoon and two penalties from former Harlequin David Slemen.  Before that, however, Connacht had lost every away match this season bar Montpellier in Europe, although a recent defeat at Leinster was only by a 16-13 margin.  Ulster, Worcester and more recently Llanelli (by a score of 33-19) have all fallen in Galway.

As Mark has already told us, Connacht already have a good pedigree in this tournament having reached the semi-finals in the last two years.  They have a decent squad to make the best go of getting through to the final four again at our expense.  Their internationals number a Tongan centre, Andrew Mailei who joined in the autumn and is one of the Irishmen’s new registrations, and former Leicester scrum-half Tom Tierney who has played eight times for Ireland.  Back three stars Mark McHugh, with a single cap, and Conor McPhillips has toured with the senior squad.

Ireland A caps number three in front-rowers John Fogarty and Ray Hogan and quality scrum-half Chris Keane.  Further experience comes in the shape of former Premiership players Dan McFarland, Darren Yapp and former Leeds no. 8 Colm Rigney.  Full back Matt Mostyn is also a most talented player, whilst as previously stated full back Slemen has played in the Heineken Cup for Harlequins.

With the awful performance against Northampton on Sunday, another thing we won’t be looking forward to is Kevin Matthews, joint second-top try scorer in the tournament so far with six.  However, Rob Andrew has stated that he and the team cannot wait to take out their frustrations on Connacht, and so hopefully we can look forward to a much-improved display on Friday night as Sky Sports cover their first ever European Challenge Cup quarter-final.

Interesting stat: We are the only team in the competition who have not received a yellow card yet.  Brive are next best with two, and every other side has transgressed nastily at least three times.  Connacht are amongst the worst offenders with six sin-binnings.

The teams, Connacht first, with fly-half Paul Warwick having a fitness test on Friday morning:-

15 Mark McHugh
14 Matt Mostyn
13 Andrew Mailei
12 Keith Matthews
11 Conor McPhillips
10 David Slemen/Paul Warwick
9 Chris Keane
1 Ray Hogan
2 John Fogarty
3 Stephen Knoop
4 David Gannon
5 Andrew Farley (captain)
6 John Muldoon
7 Matt Lacey
8 Colm Rigney

Replacements:

Joe Merrigan
Adrian Clarke
Christian Short
Michael Swift
Tom Tierney
David Slemen/Paul Warwick/Ted Robinson
Gavin Williams

And then to a Falcons side showing nine changes from last week:-

15 Matthew Burke
14 Tom May
13 Jamie Noon
12 Mark Mayerhofler
11 Anthony Elliott
10 Toby Flood
9 Hall Charlton
1 Jonny Williams
2 Matt Thompson
3 Micky Ward
4 Luke Gross
5 Geoff Parling
6 Mike McCarthy
7 Cory Harris
8 Colin Charvis (captain)

Replacements:

Robbie Morris
Andy Long
Andy Perry
Owen Finegan
Ben Woods
James Grindal
Dave Walder

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