Rossie

I forget Flavin is that old constantly. Hooker is an are we need to keep an eye out for talent.

If I am not mistaking Henry played prop on the 21s for Connacht a few years ago. I don't think he was academy with us at all. People in Limerick and Cork say that a factor with a players success is their back-round. Henry played with UL, whos coach is now the Munster A coach. I am delighted to see a Connacht player getting on down there and wish him all the best.

I know it is just me being greedy but I just want us to recruit as highly rated as possible and feel we could do better.

I am delighted with the Parks signing and think he will offer a lot to the team. There have been plenty of times this year we looked like a ship without a rudder and I feel that experience will guide the team.

noc jarvis and duffy play centre as well. we have plenty of wingers and others to replace duffy at full back etc. spend money on 9 and 8 and we will be grand

Did Noc not play some games at 12 for Ulster?

sea_point wrote: Absolute Legend - the man has broken himself several times over in the Green of Connacht an absolute warrior for us with great skills to boot. If he's interested in coaching there should be an academy role for him?

I asked TOH on twitter who scares him most at training, he said JOC and Razor. Must be a nutter 7 thing.

sea_point wrote: Depends on budget but my feeling is that Eric will have to choose to etiher retain Henry for another season or sign Kyle, ideally if the budget stretched we'd keep both

Unless they intend to spend the money elsewhere I think there has always been cash for 4 centres. Henry replaced Niva, Tonetti was signed when Keith's retirement was inevitable. I think it should be do able. But with 4 out halves instead of 3 maybe that's in the balance now.

Nobody, i was suprised by Henrys age when you highlighted it. I thought he was 23 on the basis that he had just graduated from Munsters acadamy. He is Munsters starting hooker in B+i cup team though and has been for 2 seasons now and is highly rated there if down the pecking order. Fogarty is being released and Flannery may yet have to retire(its still unclear apparently) which would put him up to third. Given that flavin is 33 i thought that in 12mths or so he mite be a good signing.

Given that we are reportedly working off a wage budget of 3m with white and parks taking a big slice of that over the next 2 yrs any other signings will have to be from other acadamies/squads most likely from the other 3 provinces. Hopefully we have enough for one more big signing but if so i agree with connacht cows that a scrum half is top of requirements.

rossie wrote: id agree that we are ok at hooker but ultimately would like to see someone like Henry coming in there to replace Flavin in next 12mths or so. Dont know anything about dermot murphy so cant comment.

I have heard this talk before and maybe it is just me but I think it is insane. I feel Flavin is one of the most honest players we have. He may not be spectacular but will hit his jumper all day.

Sean henry is from Sligo and it is great to see him doing well. But at the same time he is 5th choice hooker with Munster (Flannery, Varley, Sherry, Fogarty). he is going 25 this year and has played 5 times for Munster.

I feel we have shown ambition in White and, to some, a lesser extent in Parks. Going for a 5th choice from another province is a major step back. Murphy is two years younger and with a greater skill set as he is a converted flanker. I would rather see him get gametime

ummm, wrote: It's clear with two in two will have to leave, if not three players if the quota is reduced.

Ray has given his all for us and it will be a sad day when he moves on, but with Grace, Browne, Conneely and Kearney showing talent I'm afraid he's a luxury we will be unlikely to afford. Ray knew putting on the Samoa shirt for one game in the hopes of going to the RWC would probably mean the end of his time at Connacht, but who can't love him for it? He had a dream to wear his country's shirt and went for it. I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm not then Rock on Razor, it's been great.

Absolute Legend - the man has broken himself several times over in the Green of Connacht an absolute warrior for us with great skills to boot. If he's interested in coaching there should be an academy role for him?

Dylan and Rodney are under threat with Whites arrival. Can't see us holding on to both, and at this stage Dylan has shown more this season, even though Rodney has been troubled with injury. It'll be a downer if Rodney leaves, when he first arrived he couldn't be moved in the scrum, he was an absolute rock. I wonder how much of our own coaches have to take the blame for his loss of technique? One thing going for him is Rodney was signed as a designated project player. That assumes a kind of investment that the IRFU probably won't want to waste.

The reason he was a rock who couldn't be moved is that he was seriously overweight and couldn't run ten feet with an oxygen tank coming on the pitch

Fets has been ok, but has hardly lit the place up. It was great to see he got his first try last week, but there's something wrong when your marquee Carr replacement scores his first try 22 games into the season.

Fets has only started nine games for us mainly Pro12, and in a fair few we have been absolutely shocking in terms of our back play. If he maintains his progress then I think we have a serious player on our hands. May not score as regualrly as Carr though, but I'd gladly be proved wrong

Henry is on a 1 year contract. That alone might be the deciding factor between him and Fets. While Henry hasn't impressed everyone I think he's been honest and looks to get others involved. He has more challengers in the centre though.

Depends on budget but my feeling is that Eric will have to choose to etiher retain Henry for another season or sign Kyle, ideally if the budget stretched we'd keep both

Edna has done his job. Whether or not you liked what he had to say on his blog that one time at least he put himself forward to reach out to the fans, rather than leaving it to an established player. I liked that.

We need to see a bit more than enthusiasm from him, and he can get carried away a bit in the championship minutes. Solid enough though unless there's a domestic option available

George you will have to prise from my cold dead hands.

Clearly still coming back from injury (he didn't play in Japan at all, he's been solid rather than spectacular but there have been flashes recently.

With two to leave, assuming no other NIE's to come in, I'd guess Ray & Rodney. Which would leave us with White, Edna, Dylan, George, Fets, Parks & Henry - assuming 6+1 still, or Henry to drop out if 5+1. Won't be clear until all the horsetrading is done over the next few months, certainly don't expect a statement to clarify whay the plan is...

I think that anderson is a 6 who can also play 2nd row. Not the biggest 2nd row in the world tho but then again neither is macca and it doesnt hold him back. Dont think he has the skill set for 7 or 8.

If I was McCrea or Anderson I wouldn't be very happy and if Whitten was to ask me if signing for Connacht is a good idea I'm afraid the answer would be a flat out negative. For those boys the Connacht 'game time' mantra is a lie.

Anderson may have been signed to cover Mul but Mick Kearney has proven to be a better signing. And lets not forget how good Andrew Browne was at 6 last year. I don't know if Anderson can play 7 or 8, but if he can he should concentrate on that, because right now we have 6 well covered and two injury prone 7s and an overworked George at 8.

Frank Murphy causes me so much head scratching to a casual observer it probably looks like I have a major infestation. He was excellent in our HEC games. It's as if he needed those games to get motivated. Now everyone likes to think of some players as 'big game' players, but we play a lot more 'normal games' than bigs ones and can't afford passengers.

swift4prez wrote: cows id be happy with flavin at hooker, always does a very good job and his lineouts are close to 100%.

fetu has time to prove himself but what has happen to mark mc crea AGAIN???? id have him at 14.
when he stopped playing he had a little injury but nothing serious

I'm happy with Flavin as well. Always thought he'd be able to take over from Cronin, but if we want to progress, we should be looking to keep improving our players.

I like Fetu as well, but if there is a better player available out there, who is willing to join the team, we should be looking to sign him.

We cant get caught standing still, we should be trying to constantly improve.
When the time comes, and there isa better player available than Duffy, or McCarthy, we have to take the chance

But, we have to worry about our main weaknesses first of all. Prop and out half have been looked at at. Scrum half is next IMO

id agree that we are ok at hooker but ultimately would like to see someone like Henry coming in there to replace Flavin in next 12mths or so. Dont know anything about dermot murphy so cant comment.

I also think we will be ok at 7 wth Grace and coeely backing up joc assuming Ray goes.

Does anyone know what the story with anderson is. We have flogged Mul all season and this guy was signed to share the workload but we havent seen him. Has he been injured or or do we need to offload and sign decent cover here?

Im a firm believer we need a decent signing at 9 with stringer my personal favourite. I dont really rate pod and murphy has looked lazy and unmotivated for long periods of this season. I like what ive seen of moore and given our obvious extra expenditure we mite get away with dolan and marmion as back up here.

If Henry is let go and we keep tonetti we will need one iq signing here. WEitten has been suggested by some here but i dont know enuf about him to comment. A cheeky 1yr offer for jj hanrahan might be A good temporary solution for both parties.

I agree wit the sentiments about the wings. The only concern would be whether tuohy recovers well from his injury. Again i echo what happened with Mccrea? if eric doesnt rate him or anyone else for that matter he should get rid and replace with someone he does rate and will use. A suggestion i would have for here given our budget restrictions would be luke o dea who has impressed me no end this season but will be well down pecking order. He is also an ennis man so galway would prob appeal to him on all fronts.

Full back has a lot of cover in squad but does anyone know if Loxton is recovering?

The A game really needs to get off the mark for getting the younger guys through.
~Theres alot of talent out there that will not get a look at a game other than AIL or Ulster bank or whatever its called.Those guys are the future and only the likes of A games will get them through and keep the other guys in the squad ticking over.

Don't know what's happening with McCrea. Or TJ Anderson for that matter. They were in the mix at the start of the season, which was when we had 3 of our 4 wins in the pro12.

I don't think they lacked effort and McCrea at least has plenty of potential (allegedly). It seems the only way onto this team is on the back of anothers injury. Fets himself didn't become a regular starter until Tuohy's leg injury.

Forcing players to always aim to take a place on merit is a fine mentality, but not very realistic. And with no 'A' team it's impossible for fringe players to play their way into contention.

I guess the problem has been that as our losing streak continued the pressure to win became more intense and the opportunity to rest players and rotate in others was something we couldn't afford.

But even from the bench we could have had TJ, Mark & Miah subbing for Kearney, Henry & Jarvis.

cows id be happy withflavin at hooker, always does a very good job and his lineouts are close to 100%.

fetu has time to prove himself but what has happen to mark mc crea AGAIN???? id have him at 14.
when he stopped playing he had a little injury but nothing serious

Now that Parks is sorted. What do we need next?
Which of the following do you think we need to be looking at?

A Hooker?
A number 7?
A scrumhalf?
A center?
A winger?

I'd be happy with a starting 15 next season consisting of

Wilkinson, AN OTHER, White
Swift, McCarthy
Muldoon, AN OTHER (or fully fit JOC), NAOUPU
AN OTHER, Parks
O'Halloran, McSharry, Griffin, AN OTHER/Vainikolo
Duffy

The NIE thing is all a bit fuzzy I think. It used to be 5+1 for everyone. Then it was changed to something like 6+1 for us as part of steps to help with our 'development'.

Our 6+1 are : Rodney (project), Edna, Dylan, George, Fets, Henry & Miah.

Next year Miah becomes IE, Ray moves to NIE.

Where it gets complicated is the 5+1 rule for the other three will be changed to 4+1 next year (accelerating Mr White's departure from Leinster)

It's not clear if the NIE rule is being reduced by 1 at all provinces, or just the other three. In other words, it's not clear if we go from 6+1 to 5+1, or possibly we'll have extra project players? Maybe a 5+2?

It's clear with two in two will have to leave, if not three players if the quota is reduced.

Ray has given his all for us and it will be a sad day when he moves on, but with Grace, Browne, Conneely and Kearney showing talent I'm afraid he's a luxury we will be unlikely to afford. Ray knew putting on the Samoa shirt for one game in the hopes of going to the RWC would probably mean the end of his time at Connacht, but who can't love him for it? He had a dream to wear his country's shirt and went for it. I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm not then Rock on Razor, it's been great.

Dylan and Rodney are under threat with Whites arrival. Can't see us holding on to both, and at this stage Dylan has shown more this season, even though Rodney has been troubled with injury. It'll be a downer if Rodney leaves, when he first arrived he couldn't be moved in the scrum, he was an absolute rock. I wonder how much of our own coaches have to take the blame for his loss of technique?

One thing going for him is Rodney was signed as a designated project player. That assumes a kind of investment that the IRFU probably won't want to waste.

Fets has been ok, but has hardly lit the place up. It was great to see he got his first try last week, but there's something wrong when your marquee Carr replacement scores his first try 22 games into the season.

Henry is on a 1 year contract. That alone might be the deciding factor between him and Fets. While Henry hasn't impressed everyone I think he's been honest and looks to get others involved. He has more challengers in the centre though.

Edna has done his job. Whether or not you liked what he had to say on his blog that one time at least he put himself forward to reach out to the fans, rather than leaving it to an established player. I liked that.

George you will have to prise from my cold dead hands.

With two to leave, assuming no other NIE's to come in, I'd guess Ray & Rodney. Which would leave us with White, Edna, Dylan, George, Fets, Parks & Henry - assuming 6+1 still, or Henry to drop out if 5+1.