THE PICTURE FACING Connacht isn’t a pretty one. With 11 rounds of URC action under their belts they sit 13th in the league table, Sunday’s 41-12 loss at Leinster their seventh defeat of the season.

If Connacht are to make a surge for the play-off positions, they need to start picking up points soon. Next up is a home clash against the Sharks on Saturday, who are fifth. Just one week into 2023, it’s a game that Andy Friend already feels is “season-defining” for the province.

“It is season-defining, we have to win that. No doubt about that,” Friend said. “That’s pretty much our URC season. We’ve got to get a win there.”

It’s quite a lot of pressure on the squad at this stage of the year, and while the second half of Connacht’s season looks kinder that the first half of the fixture list, they are now desperately scrambling for points.

We said at the front-end of the year we want to be a top-eight side, well we don’t have enough wins at the minute. So, we want to be that so we’ve got to front up now and start winning games.

“I am confident, I just said to the boys that weirdly I’m driving down the highway (after the Leinster game) in a weird way thinking I saw enough there tonight to think we’re on the right track.

“People might not believe that, but I did see enough. We now have to go and deliver it, knowing that our backs are against the wall. So, it’ll be the test of us now.”

While they ultimately fell off the pace in shipping seven tries against Leinster, there were some encouraging signs for Connacht at the RDS. Their attack enjoyed some good moments in the first half – the visitors trailing by just five points at half time – and the Murray brothers, Darragh and Niall, did a good job of disrupting the Leinster lineout.

“The lineout, our set-piece stuff. Some of our defensive stuff was very good, some of our attack was very good,” Friend continued.

“We showed that when we put our head down, run hard and get our leg-drive going we can be very good.

“Some areas where I thought we let ourselves down – we get on top of a team and it’s a drop, a knock-on. We don’t get numbers to the breakdown, we get a jackal against us. But, you’ve also got to pay compliment to Leinster. It’s the reason they haven’t lost a game all season, because they’re a damn-good footie side.

So, yeah, weirdly there’s some positives to take out of that. But we’ve got to start winning games now.”

Connacht failed to register a single point in the second half against Leinster and were frustrated to see Johnny Sexton receive no punishment for a high tackle on Jarrad Butler, with Friend echoing Leinster boss Leo Cullen’s comments around there being an inconsistency in how high tackles are refereed.

“It’s just inconsistent at the moment, isn’t it? I thought there was a couple of head-on-heads that didn’t appear to get looked at, I’m sure they’ll sort that out.”

Following the Sharks game, Connacht head into back-to-back Challenge Cup ties against Brive and Newcastle, with a URC fixture against the Lions their last outing before the start of the Six Nations.

“We were asked before the game tonight what is the standard of the URC, well it’s a tough competition and a good standard. There’s no easy games.

“The next couple of fixtures, they’re certainly not interpros – we’ve had them now – but they’re tough games.

“You’ve got quality rugby sides with quality players and coaches coming up against you and we know it’s tough, but we also know that we want to be a side that’s hopefully going to be there in the top eight at the end of the season so we’ve got to start winning games.”

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