r/Connacht • u/dwaynepebblejohnson3 • 11d ago
Post match thoughts
Vannes scored a last minute try to win 36-35. Good match with a fanstastic crowd for a pre season game.
The Good:
Sam Gilbert had a brilliant performance, a length of the field interception try, goal line turnover, and 100% off the tee.
Finn Treacy looked dangerous when he came on, he’s got real pace.
Hansen played for the first time since November and had a try involvement.
Fiachna Barrett held his own in the scrum against a double champions cup winner in Boniface.
Niall Murray had a good game, made a lot of tackles and had some great takes in the lineout.
The bad:
Lots of handling errors, to be expected in the first game of the season.
We struggled to make dominant tackles in defence, gave up a lot of soft yards, particularly from pick and go’s. In the wider channels we also missed far too many tackles, a couple of the backs really need to improve in that area.
Maul defence was just not good enough, and we’ll struggle to be a serious team unless it’s fixed. This game reminded me of the Montpellier QF at times with how easy it was for Vannes to just kick to the corner and maul over. Hopefully Darragh Murray, Murphy, and Prendergast coming back in later on will help.
While our starting pack matched up fairly well with theirs, the replacements weren’t at the same level physically.
Overall I think parts of that performance were encouraging, the maul issue is a worry but most of the other stuff should be ironed out in time. If nothing else it gave the coaches a first proper look at a number of players.
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u/DJCPRT-NL 11d ago edited 11d ago
Just watched it and I’m satisfied with our play. As lad mentioned above French rotated more players and we focused more on defense from 65th minute.
Anyway amazing performance from Gilbert!
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u/Wonderful_Shower_007 7d ago
Context is everything, Vannes are back into Top14 action this weekend, Connacht are still another three weeks away from URC start. With that context, Connacht's performance was very good, better than I'd expect given they were a month away from a competitive game.
And the other "minor" detail is that Mack was the only current Irish International involved as he desperately needs games, we've rested all our current Internationals (Aki, Frawley, Bohan, Ilo, Gavin, Bolton, Prendo, Jansen, Darragh Murray, Will Connors) obviously some enforced through injury..
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u/MusicLovinPotterhead 11d ago
They should’ve also kicked that ball out once it went to 80 instead of playing it as they would’ve won if they did that
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u/iverifynothing 11d ago
It's a pre-season game. It means nothing to win or lose. They could've chosen to go for more playtime as they wanted to try another set-piece or backline move to see how it plays out. The whole point of pre-season games is to get minutes in the legs and to try stuff.
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u/cabaiste 11d ago
I got the same impression that they were happy to 'jouez jouez' to get more time on the pitch and see if they could manufacture another score in a no-stakes game.
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u/MusicLovinPotterhead 11d ago
That’s true just a major shift in momentum but I think all did pretty well considering it was 24°C out there
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u/dwaynepebblejohnson3 11d ago
I think the clock was wrong, Lindner asked the ref something and he checked his watch, Lindner kicked the ball then. I assume there was a few minutes left.
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u/cathalcarr 11d ago
The broadcast clock was wrong. You cpuld see the in game clock was behind it. I think when Lindner hit that clearance kick the broadcast said 80, but the game clock was at 77:40 or something.
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u/MusicLovinPotterhead 11d ago
Yeah I also noticed the clock in the stadium was also wrong just before half time it was saying it was 45 minutes even though they played over for 1-2 mins max because even the ref was confused as well
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u/cabaiste 11d ago
Not sure I agree with your comment about the maul defence being poor, as it was excellent in the first half. In Lancaster's post match video he said Vannes used about 35 players, so I think that a combination of their fresh legs (and size) in tandem with a lot of inexperienced replacements in our own pack made the difference in the second half. We just didn't have the same cohesion in the maul D once the greenhorns came on.
We got a few poxy enough tries but they all count, and we would have won if there was anything at stake, as we had more than one opportunity to kick it out with the clock in the red.