Connacht v Zebre 7.35pm TG4

There's hardly anybody travelling to this from/through Foxford/Swinford/Charlestown direction that would have a spare place, I'll cover fuel.

Hi Mulman,

I won't be coming from that direction but I will be travelling back that way after the match. PM me if that is suitable for you.

Connacht team

(15-9) Darragh Leader, Cian Kelleher, Eoin Griffin, Tom Farrell, Matt Healy, Craig Ronaldson, Caolin Blade, (1- Denis Coulson, Tom McCartney, Finlay Bealham, Gavin Thornbury, James Cannon, Eoghan Masterson (Capt), Naulia Dawai, Sean O’Brien.

Replacements (16-23): Dave Heffernan, Peter McCabe, Conor Carey, Quinn Roux, John Muldoon, Kieran Marmion, Jack Carty, Pita Ahki.

Zebre team

15 Ciaran Gaffney
14 Gabriele Di Giulio
13 Giulio Bisegni
12 Faialaga Afamasaga
11 Rory Parata
10 Carlo Canna
9 Guglielmo Palazzani

8 Renato Giammarioli
7 Maxime Mbandà
6 Johan Meyer
5 George Biagi (cap)
4 James Tucker
3 Eduardo Bello
2 Oliviero Fabiani
1 Cruze Ah-Nau

Replacements :

16 Tommaso D’Apice
17 Andrea De Marchi
18 Dario Chistolini
19 David Sisi
20 Derick Minnie
21 Riccardo Raffaele
22 Serafin Bordoli
23 Giovanbattista Venditti

Great to have SOB back and interesting he is at 8.

Parata and Gaffney!

Won't be there tonight, but just saw on Twitter that Corinthians inclusion rugby team are playing for the very first time during half time at the Sports ground tonight. Please give them your support.

Really scrappy first half, the ref is allowing it to turn ugly, but horrid defence by us on multiple occassions, I missed ten minutes or so from the 2nd-11th mins while there was a power outage here, did Parata go off injured for them.
Edit: I see he's still on, I just didn't know if I had heard his name and 22 for them had come on.

This is beyond poor, very poor tackling and the defensive line is all over the place, even when we've had the ball the lines have been poor and the carries have been weak, fair play to Zebre they look an awful lot more organised, which is very worrying. We need to make changes while we're still in it.

Inept. Didn’t think they could play as bad as that. Shocking.

Didn’t even have the smarts to go for posts with last penalty. Can not seem them winning another game this year.

a lot of players tonight were embarrassingly bad, I cannot understand how Ronaldson who was having an absolute mare wasn't brought off, his game management was really poor, Thornbury, Farrell, Blade, Griffin, McCartney and Masterson were all very poor also. There was absolutely no cohesion and Zebre were able to predict us and just had to make their tackles as there was no clever lines or support play any time a half break was made, passes thrown to nobody the ball flung away in the tackle when there was no support, a shambolic lineout, a non-existent defensive line and no plan b whatsoever, this is much worse than the sham that happened last time we met Zebre. I'm really, really annoyed at the lack of a performance tonight, I'm not sure why, or what it is within the team, but they can turn up for the bigger games more often than not and at least compete and do the basics well, but the lesser matches which lets face it are our bread and butter we just give rubbish performances, like both Cardiff games and both Zebre games the Dragons game, and even a few wins came with lackluster showings, surely from here the only way can be up, at least we looked better when Muldoon, Roux and Marmion came on.

That was as bad as it gets. Looked clueless. Ronaldson is a nice 12 but he is a very poor 10. Blame has to lie with KK, we found out ronaldson isnt a good enough 10 3-4 years ago. Would like to look for positives but it is hard to see what connacht are trying to do to stretch teams. I don't think the players know either. Positives: we can park the league and focus on Europe

Shockingly bad and here was me thinking we may have a chance of winning the challenge cup after that i would go as far to say we haven't got a hope in hell

Any positives anybody? Brain dead. Had hopes the half time would be used to cop players on. Was space in behind never exploited. Line out was atrocious. The double. Jaysus wept.

No sugar coating that, losing to Zebre at home is beyond embarrassing. No disrespect to Zebre they deserved their win but based on Connacht's performance KK probably should turnover half the squad at a minimum. Very depressing.

First of all fair play to Zebre. It's fair to say the final score flattered us which sums up how bad we were but they were the only team playing cohesive rugby tonight. They could have won by another couple of tries. They've beaten us 8-0 this season and have beaten us 3 times in a row now.

When you're losing without a bonus point twice to Zebre, to Dragons, losing at home to Cardiff, drawing against a thrown together Worcester team in a vital game it's not good enough.

From our viewpoint I've seen some terrible stuff over the years but that was probably the worst ever performance I've seen from a Connacht team certainly at the Sportsground. I don't think anyone comes out of that debacle with any credit. We were sloppy from the off and got what we deserved. The only part of Connacht's performance that functioned to any degree was the scrum. We just never really looked like breaking them down similar to in Parma.

Really though this defeat is symbolic of bigger problems within the setup. If you exclude the wins against 2nd string relegation threatened sides in the Challenge Cup, bar maybe the Ulster game and patches of one or two other games watching most of Connacht's games this season has been painful.

When Pat Lam was here the first season had a lot of disappointing nights but you could see what we were trying to achieve and there were nights it did come together. I've watched us all season I honestly don't really see where we are going. We are relying on a moment of inspiration from one of our bigger players and if that doesn't happen we plod along aimlessly until we turn the ball over. For me the league season was over the day we lost at home to Cardiff but after tonight it's firmly dead and buried.

We are really devoid of leadership and that has been shown so many times this season. For me there's no leadership in the pack. The lineout once again was a shambles, even the ones we won weren't really ball you could work off. The rolling maul is an absolute mess both offensively and defensively.

I don't want to list out names but we have a lot of players who are just not up to it and need to be let go in the summer. It's not nice having to let go any players but if we are to return to some level of respectability there needs to be big changes.

On a separate point, hopefully Ciaran Gaffney isn't too badly hurt. His return to Galway didn't last long unfortunately. Good to see Rory Parata back too. Still think he's a much better option than a few of the backs we have in our squad at present.

I'm sure we'll lift it for Gloucester in the Challenge Cup and if we get a few players back it'll give us more cohesion but in terms of the bigger picture I'm very worried that Connacht is heading back to the bad old days again.