ANDY FRIEND has said that focusing on the individual strengths of his fellow coaches was a major factor behind his recent move to a Director of Rugby role within the Connacht set-up.

In advance of the 2021-22 season, there were a number of additions to the Australian’s senior coaching ticket with Mossy Lawler, Colm Tucker and South African native Dewald Senekal all added to the mix. Whereas Lawler was appointed to the position of assistant attack and skills coach, Tucker was put in charge of defence with former Toulon back-row Senekal tasked with looking after the line-out and scrum.

Having previously had Tucker’s remit, Peter Wilkins became a senior coach who focused primarily on the attacking side of the game. However, at the end of a difficult campaign, Friend had a number of conversations with his colleagues to see what was the best way for Connacht to move forward as a group.

This is what led to Friend taking up the Director of Rugby mantle and Wilkins being redeployed as head coach. Additionally, Lawler is now the province’s principle attack coach while Tucker (scrum and contact) and Senekal (line-out and maul) have also been afforded a chance to concentrate on their main areas of expertise.

“When I first came into this job, one of my messages to the players was ‘know what your weapon is and focus on your weapon, which is your strength’. I’ve been a big believer in that. For lots of different reasons, I probably went away from that last year. When we got the new coaching structure in last year, we were fitting the coaching structure around the people that we had in,” Friend explained.

“Upon reflection of it, we paused and went ‘is that actually our weapon? Is that all of our strengths?’ The longer I go with my coaching, I know what my strength is. My strength is working one-on-one with people. Giving people support and challenging them. To give them an opportunity to try and grow.

“I moved into a Director of Rugby role and I did that knowing that I’ve got four really good coaches onside with me, who I need to open up space to. It was just sitting down saying ‘you know what, we did this for a reason last year. We can be better again if we all just zone in on what we’re really good at’.

“After nine weeks, I can tell you it’s a really happy coaching group. People are doing what they love doing and I think that’s going to pay real dividends for us going forward.”

There will also be a degree of freshness on the field of play for Connacht’s United Rugby Championship opener against Ulster at Kingspan Stadium on Saturday (kick-off 7.35pm). The westerners have made six signings in advance of the new campaign, most notably Peter Dooley, Adam Byrne, David Hawkshaw and Josh Murphy from interprovincial rivals Leinster.

All four of these players will be familiar to Connacht supporters from their duels with the Blues in the recent past. They may be less familiar with overseas recruits Shamus Hurley-Langton and Byron Ralston, but Friend offered a glimpse of what can be expected from them in the season ahead.

“The four Leinster boys have been brilliant. They’re all really coachable, they’re all really knowledgeable rugby players. It’s great to have them on board. Then we had the two other signings from outside of Ireland. Shamus Hurley-Langton, who came in from New Zealand. He’s a very dynamic back-rower. Been working really hard.

“I really liked his performance against Castres [in a recent pre-season friendly]. He told us that his weapon was pilfering the ball and he managed to get three in the opening game so he was true to his word there.

“Then Byron Ralston, who joined us from the [Western] Force, he’s got Irish heritage. He’s a centre, but he also can play on the wing. Been really impressed with his stuff. All six of them have been good and I think they’re going to be great additions for us.”

There will also be a number of absentees for Saturday’s opener, however, and Friend could potentially lose more players to the Emerging Ireland squad for their forthcoming tour of South Africa. The final selection for this three-game trip to the southern hemisphere will be unveiled tomorrow and there are several Connacht stars in contention for a spot.

Whatever side he can choose on a given week over the course of the next nine months, Friend has a very clear goal for what he wants to achieve. An 11th place finish in last season’s United Rugby Championship has seen them drop down to the European Challenge Cup and the ex-Harlequins and Brumbies coach is intent on making the play-offs in both competitions.

“That’s our target. URC has to be our bread and butter because if we can make the URC play-offs we know we’re in the Champions Cup next year. That’s the competition that we want to get into. We weren’t successful last year in getting into that,” Friend added.

“We want to make sure that we make the play-offs of the URC and if we can go further than that, we’ll wait until we get to that time and we’ll discuss that. Then for the Challenge Cup, last year was our first time making it to the knockout stages of the Champions Cup. We want to do the same this year in the Challenge Cup and see where we go from there.”