Scarlets 23
Connacht 24
CONNACHT’S REVIVAL GATHERED pace as they hung tough at Parc y Scarlets to win a thriller by a single point thanks to a 78th-minute penalty by Cathal Forde.
If it was a far from perfect performance, Pete Wilkins can have few complaints after his side snatched victory from the jaws of defeat as his side extended their dominance over the Welsh regions with an 11th game without defeat.
Having ended their four-game league losing run with a 36-30 win over Sharks in Galway, they flew out of the blocks and were 14 points to the good in almost as many minutes thanks to tries from Piers O’Connor and Mack Hansen.
The Scarlets had done the same the previous weekend in their home defeat to Cardiff and head coach Dwayne Peel would have been horrified by how his side conceded the opening score in only the second minute.
Jack Carty used piggy-back penalties to take the Irish visitors deep into the home 22 and then used a cross kick to the right wing to add further pressure. Hansen followed up faithfully and full back Ioan Nicholas panicked as he picked up the ball on his line and tried to pass inside.
O’Connor said, ‘Thank you very much’ as he saw the ball bouncing in the in-goal area and merely had to flop on it to bag the try that Carty converted. O’Connor thought he had picked up another after joining a driving maul at a five metre penalty but, after awarding the try, South African referee Marius van der Westhuizen reversed his decision after the TMO spotted some obstruction from Josh Murphy.
They may not have picked up the try, but Connacht saw Tommy Rogers leave the field with a yellow card for interfering with the throw in and it didn’t take long for Cian Predergast’s side to take advantage.
From a scrum on the home 22 wide out on the left they trucked it up in the middle and then Carty kicked into the wide open spaces for Hansen to race onto the inch-perfect kick to pick up on the line and score. Carty added the extras.
Two tries from Wales scrum half Gareth Davies then got the home side back into the contest, both of them coming when Bundee Aki was in the sin-bin for a neck-high tackle. Davies sniped over from a close range ruck for his first and then finished off a great midfield break by Johnny Williams that enabled him to set his scrum-half free from the 22.
Sam Costelow converted both tries and the Scarlets could have had a third just before the break from a five metre line-out had it not been for great defensive work from the Connacht forwards. Having turned over the line-out they then won a scrum from which Aki made some amends by sending Conor Oliver through a hole with a beautiful inside pass.
He sprinted out of the 22, linked with Paul Boyle who then handed Ben Murphy a simple run to the posts for his third try of the season. Carty’s conversion made it 21-14 to Connacht at the break.
The second half turned into a much tighter affair with Scarlets taking off their Scottish international loosehead prop Alec Hepburn and brought on Kemsley Mathias. Finlay Bealham had picked up three penalties against him in the first half, but everything changed up front after the change.
The Scarlets won a string of scrum penalties and Sam Costelow and Ioan Lloyd kicked two penalties to claw it back to a one point game in the 53rd minute. A third penalty for Costelow in the 74th minute edged the Scarlets ahead and it looked as though they might end a run of four successive home defeats.
But when Marnus van der Merwe got over the ball wide out on his left as Connacht went all out for the win, the referee said it was an illegal jackal. Up stepped Forde and over went the match-winning kick.
Scarlets scorers:
Tries: G Davies 2
Conversions: S Costelow 2
Penalties: S Costelow 2, I Lloyd.
Connacht scorers:
Tries: P O’Connor, M Hansen, B Murphy
Conversions: J Carty 3
Penalty: C Forde
Scarlets: Ioan Nicholas (Ioan Lloyd 42-57, 61); Tom Rogers, Johnny Williams, Eddie James, Blair Murray; Sam Costelow (Macs Page 44-57), Gareth Davies; Alec Hepburn (Kemsley Mathias 40), Ryan Elias (Marnus van der Merwe 56), Henry Thomas (Sam Wainwright 56), Sam Lousi (Alex Craig 61), Max Douglas, Josh Macleod (captain), Dan Davis, Taine Plumtree (Alex Craig 34-40)
Connacht: Santiago Cordero (David Hawkshaw 63); Mack Hansen, Cathal Forde, Bundee Aki, Piers O’Conor; Jack Carty (Shayne Bolton 60), Ben Murphy (Caolin Blade 54); Denis Buckley (Peter Dooley 52), Dave Heffernan (Dylan Tierney-Martin 52), Finlay Bealham (Temi Lasisi 63), Niall Murray (Oisín Dowling 56), David O’Connor, Josh Murphy, Conor Oliver, Cian Prendergast (captain, Paul Boyle 31).
Referee: Marius van der Westhuizen (South Africa)