That's simply not true, he may have had issues with his professional relationship with the provinces Coach/CEO but Berch always respected the support and opportunities he was given. His progress as a coach shows him to be a an above average analyst of games, and despited the personnel changes he is familiar and in contact with a lot of people still currently involved with Connacht Rugby...

You'd be a better position to know so I'll take your word for it. It didn't come across that way in his autobiography unfortunately. Like I said I always liked him as a player for us.

connachtexile wrote:

especially seeing as Jackass, sorry Jackman was on the panal, you'd think he'd remember how tough the media are on Connacht, but I suppose eaten bread is soon forgotten.

Jackman in his autobiography had some pretty mean stuff so say about Connacht. A lot was warranted admittedly but he has little love for us. Was always a good player for us though.

That's simply not true, he may have had issues with his professional relationship with the provinces Coach/CEO but Berch always respected the support and opportunities he was given. His progress as a coach shows him to be a an above average analyst of games, and despited the personnel changes he is familiar and in contact with a lot of people still currently involved with Connacht Rugby...

Does someone know who made the deflection on the last Connacht restart kick?

Lenihan said that Connacht are extremely frustrating to watch and they are.
Both he and shaggy went on to show several examples of good and naive play to show why.
O brien s reference to Connacht as a true development province was intended IMO in the way that phatguerilla said. A province properly funded by the irfu and loaded with Irish players pushing for inclusion for international squads.
He thinks he's funny but he's not.

connachtexile wrote:

especially seeing as Jackass, sorry Jackman was on the panal, you'd think he'd remember how tough the media are on Connacht, but I suppose eaten bread is soon forgotten.

Jackman in his autobiography had some pretty mean stuff so say about Connacht. A lot was warranted admittedly but he has little love for us. Was always a good player for us though.

He'd do well to remember he'd have finished his career in AIL if Connacht didn't give him an avenue back to the pro game. He has since knocked a good living out of the game and has established himself as an up and coming coach. None of that would have happened if he hadn't got back into the pro game.

TBH I wasn't a fan of his when he was with Connacht, tended to pick and choose his games too much for my liking.

O'Brien is a complete joke.

couldn't agree more about RTEs coverage which is why I watched it on BBC Wales. had a mini rant on twitter about it so hopefully they'll have noticed

The coverage was a joke. If they dont have anyone with knowledge about Connacht, why not try to get some journalists from the West up to the studio for the day?

Why not Adrian Flavin? He's written for the journal.ie a few times and knows his stuff he's also a former player.

The coverage was a joke. If they dont have anyone with knowledge about Connacht, why not try to get some journalists from the West up to the studio for the day?
Anyone would have been better than the lads on RTÉ.

I've tweeted about it a couple of times today, but each tweet had to be edited a couple of times.
Honestly, with my broken Irish, I would have learnt more watching TG4 than RTE

It was pretty childish of them to just giggle but honestly could anyone have reasonably expected a 4 try bonanza based on the first half? I expected Connacht to keep things tight and play for penalties. It was a bit of a shock, but I think its great to see Connacht coming out in the second half and showing some changes in gameplan, it was only a few months ago when it seemed like we couldn't score in the second half for anything.

especially seeing as Jackass, sorry Jackman was on the panal, you'd think he'd remember how tough the media are on Connacht, but I suppose eaten bread is soon forgotten.

Jackman in his autobiography had some pretty mean stuff so say about Connacht. A lot was warranted admittedly but he has little love for us. Was always a good player for us though.

I was particularly annoyed when O'Brien (just before 2nd half started) asked the panal if any of them saw a Connacht win and they all had a great giggle...especially seeing as Jackass, sorry Jackman was on the panal, you'd think he'd remember how tough the media are on Connacht, but I suppose eaten bread is soon forgotten.

Obrien always has a snide, short or underhand comment about Connacht rugby. I'm surprised at Donal Lenihan but just goes to show he does not watch any of our matches unless he is commentating or a pundit. Birch I thought was his normal self and Shaggy is passionate and gets caught up in the analysis and was thwarted by the dull uneducated comments of Lenihen and Obrien. It was alwSys a ploy not to talk about the good things about Connacht and focus on the negative. The development province thing is pure crap and is what Obrien speaks regularly.

I thought some of the criticism of connacht by the panel displayed a lack of awareness from the lads which isn't really acceptable when its your job to be informed. Yeah we all would have liked to have seen connacht jackal for the ball more Shaggie, but with no 7's left to play and an 8 as flanker who has about a half dozen starts it wasn't going to happen.
Maybe make some sort of acknowledgement of how well he's done rather than just dismissing the backrow. If TOD and every other 7 at munster were missing for instance the panel would at least have known who was and wasn't familiar with the position and whether they were filling in or not.

Already a long post but wanted to acknowledge how far Connacht have come this season, we've seen some serious improvements in just a few months. The same problems still remain with regards to some quality ball carrying forwards (although though heffernan made an impact) and a few other areas but we're getting there. It was always a big ask for the same team to perform at the same level for weeks in a row and the niggles and imbalanced back row caught up to us imo.

I think Scarlets are pretty much where we are aiming to be in another year or two, we saw how close the two teams are in some regards already and with a couple of additions to the team and refinements in the game plan we can easily catch up and even surpass them.

This is pretty much what I wanted to say verbatim. Fair play Phatguerila.

I think the point after the game about development province was that Connacht have developed to the point where they are capable of feeding Ireland with quality players rather than just being a place for young leinster/munster/ulster players to get game time before moving back. I understand why it would have bothered people though and it was Daire O'Brien trying to be too clever for his own good.

I thought some of the criticism of connacht by the panel displayed a lack of awareness from the lads which isn't really acceptable when its your job to be informed. Yeah we all would have liked to have seen connacht jackal for the ball more Shaggie, but with no 7's left to play and an 8 as flanker who has about a half dozen starts it wasn't going to happen.
Maybe make some sort of acknowledgement of how well he's done rather than just dismissing the backrow. If TOD and every other 7 at munster were missing for instance the panel would at least have known who was and wasn't familiar with the position and whether they were filling in or not.

Already a long post but wanted to acknowledge how far Connacht have come this season, we've seen some serious improvements in just a few months. The same problems still remain with regards to some quality ball carrying forwards (although though heffernan made an impact) and a few other areas but we're getting there. It was always a big ask for the same team to perform at the same level for weeks in a row and the niggles and imbalanced back row caught up to us imo.

I think Scarlets are pretty much where we are aiming to be in another year or two, we saw how close the two teams are in some regards already and with a couple of additions to the team and refinements in the game plan we can easily catch up and even surpass them.

Couple of points

Patterson was his usual annoying self, he's not a bad ref but id say he would annoy both sets of fans with his interpretations. The last pen against us was particularly harsh.

Overall a good result, shows definite signs of improvement and belief in the team, some work to do but we seem to be going in the right direction.

RTE coverage is an absolute joke, 2mins to kick off and they hadn't mentioned the game. WTF was daire o brien doing bringing up the whole development province shite again for?? A great comeback from a team on the ropes and that's the type of sanctimonious crap that they bring up (Ireland need a 13 so we will dissolve the whole province to sort Connacht player on the panel (I know birch played with us) but I mean a Connacht to the core player. They really are very condescending towards us.

I'm part of those rather happy.. 0 point 80th min, 2 points 82th min. Honestly just what we deserve... defense still to work on, especially the forwards, + diving in the rucks ; but attacks were well built, the team has never given up, and last gasp try is an award for our two "pure talent" guys : Henshaw and Mc Keon

Ps the offload Henshaw/TOH is a top class action we weren't used to see in Connacht