ANDY FRIEND INSISTS Connacht will have to improve significantly if they are to reach the United Rugby Championship play-offs this season.
Connacht secured a vital 22-19 victory over the Ospreys in Swansea on Saturday night which leaves them just two points off the top eight. While Friend was pleased to leave south Wales with four match points, he was left scathing with certain aspects of his side’s display.
“Our performance lacked the clinical bits that we wanted,” said the Connacht head coach.
“There was a lot of fight. They are brave, driven men and they fight which is a great trait, but we are making life so hard for ourselves. We had six entries into the 22 in the first 25 minutes for zero return where we were turned over every single time.
“The bottom line is I am happy with the win but not as happy with the performance. We have had a really tricky start, but the bottom line is we need to be better at key areas of our game.
“I have no doubt that we will fix those, and we’ll get better, but the break has come at a good time to asses, address the problems and to see if we need to make changes.”
Connacht found themselves 12-0 down before the clock had even reached 10 minutes with Huw Sutton and Reuben Morgan-Williams scoring tries for the Ospreys. But they showed tremendous character to drag themselves back into the game with tries from Alex Wootton, Caolin Blade, and John Porch firing Connacht into the lead. Ireland out-half Jack Carty’s boot also contributed seven points.
Sam Parry scored a try for the hosts with 10 minutes to go but Connacht succeeded in weathering the storm to come out on top. Connacht now have four weeks off before facing Munster at Thomond Park, and Friend believes this break will be of benefit to his side.
“There are areas of our game which need to be tidied up,” said Friend. “The break gives us a chance to settle.
“It gives us a chance to do a proper audit on these first seven weeks with three wins out of seven. We’ve put ourselves back in the hunt because we are still very much alive in this competition.
“We have had a really tricky start but the bottom line is we need to be better at key areas of our game. I have no doubt that we will fix those and we’ll get better but the break has come at a good time to asses, address the problems and to see if we need to make changes.”
“upset the natural flow of the game”. can’t agree with that. you have lads throwing themselves on the ground left, right and centre which is far more disruptive in my opinion, especially in the bigger knockout games when they’re a goal up. sure they had water breaks in some matches in the last World Cup which went by almost unnoticed. time for the video ref.
Also it should be easy enough to moderate the use of video techology. I.e limit the number of times it can be referred to in a game…. each coach can call for a video replay three times and no more!
About time but I would rather see it use for cheating and simulation
You can nearly tell by looking up that Barcaloni19 page on youtube that you would get 9/11 conspiracy clips in the suggested videos. Short memories, he seems to forget the second leg at Stamford Bridge only the year before.
All club have been stung over the years by bad decisions but when it’s costs a team a trophy/promotion or indeed regelation it can be hard to swallow .
If ever there was a club that benefited from extremely dubious refereeing, Barcelona is it.
The farce at Stamford Bridge
The Thiago Motta red card with Busquets peeking through his hands to see if he could stop rolling around yet
Van Persie’s second yellow for playing the ball after as the whistle was blown
And then from this tie, the Suarez non-red, the Iniesta non-red and the Torres sending off.
You lost all credibility when you said Torres was harshly sent off last week.
In that inter game the goal Barcelona got was actually offside so if they had video ref back then that goal wouldn’t have stood, and also the ridiculous motta red card would never have happened
They weren’t in the video so clearly didn’t happen.
3 for the manager is too many. Its been in hockey for a few years at the high level and only now is it really a very good system without issue of bias or unfair advantage. Currently, each team has one video refferral, which they keep if they are proven correct or in the case of “no decision possible”. When the team refers and they are mistaken, they lose the referral. Teams must refer immediately after the incident (within 3 seconds i think) and it has to be close to a goalscoring event (can’t be at midfield). It goes upstairs to a ref who avails of different camera replays. There are still instances when cameras don’t pick up the incident or it is unclear what happened although football games have so many cameras this might not be an issue. Also, there are still complaints to referees even after video referrals! In football there would be issues surrounding interpretation – handball/ball to hand for instance but these would simply have to be cleared up by rules committees. I think aswell that referees own referrals would be useful but in rugby these are taken too much in my opinion. The system works well, there is usually 3 or 4 refferals a game and they are swift and exciting. I think it would work. 6 a game would be hefty and would lead to a scenario whereby there would be a refferal by a winning defensive team over a free kick the last minute purely to waste time/stop momentum type of thing. This is not attractive to see.
Trust no one
Didn’t need last night to prove this. Just the last 30 years of diving, cheating, handballs etc etc etc