Ulster Rugby vs Connacht

Sixteen years on, Pat Lam is still catching the provincial powerhouses of the Irish game by surprise. Now he stands within sight of striking a blow for the underdog mightier than the one that a patched- up Northampton struck at the expense of Mick Galwey’s red-hot favourites in the 2000 Heineken Cup final. Connacht, still lording it over the rest as undisputed leaders of the Guinness PRO12 table with four rounds to go, are on the verge of qualifying for next season’s Champions’ Cup. Under Lam, whose solitary non-Test appearance for New Zealand preceded his career as captain of Samoa, anything is possible. An away win over Ulster in Belfast tonight allied to a home success for Leinster over Munster in Dublin on Saturday afternoon would remove any mathematical doubt about Connacht’s entry among Europe’s 20-strong elite. Doing so, after the heartache of last season when a late Gloucester try brought them down at the penultimate play-off hurdle, will mean achieving the main objective agreed by Lam and his squad last summer. Now that they are almost there, Connacht can adjust their sights to goals of positively stratospheric dimension for a province where mere survival had long been the name of their game. Eoin McKeon, Galway born and Galway bred whose pulverising power in the tackle typified Connacht’s defiance of Leinster in Galway last week, summed it up to perfection: ‘’It’s onwards and upwards from here.’’ Onwards and upwards to finishing the regular season top of the heap and clinching a home play-off. Onwards and upwards all the way to the Guinness PRO12 Final at BT Murrayfield. In a competition fraught with all manner of hazards, the one certainty about Connacht is that they will not be tempting fate by looking any further than the next game. That it happens to be Ulster will ensure the leaders make the journey from west to north east with no shortage of motivation. In 12 home matches this season, Connacht have swept all before them with the notable exception of Ulster on Boxing Day. Nick Williams did the trick with the only try of the match, enough for a 10-3 win just six days before Connacht lost again, 13-0 to Leinster at the RDS Arena. Having avenged that setback last week to the delight of neutrals everywhere as well as the vast majority among a sell-out crowd of 7,300, they now have the chance to settle another score on Friday evening. That Ulster have left themselves no further room for error after three defeats in four matches underlines the sense of occasion. Connacht have already broken just about every record in their book, not least the one for the most successive wins - six and counting. Ulster will pose another severe test of the unyielding spirit illustrated by the towering tackle counts of McKeon and John Muldoon against Leinster last week. The back row pair made 42 between them, thereby ensuring that every Leinster threat to counter Kieran Marmion’s early converted try came to grief against an iron curtain of green. www.pro12rugby.com GIANTKILLER LAM ON A ROLL The Red Army’s first invasion of Twickenham ended not in Munster’s expected coronation as champions of Europe but in the anti-climax of losing to an unfancied English club captained by a one-off All Black.

OPPOSITION

CLUB STATS //Location Galway, Ireland //Founded 1885 //Ground Sportsground //Capacity 7,500 //Last Game

Leinster Rugby (H) 7 - 6 (W) Sat 26th March 2016 at 17:15 //Next Game Munster Rugby (H) Sat 16th April 2016 at 19:15 //Recent Form W W W W W

STAFF // Coach Pat Lam // Captain John Muldoon

CONTACT Galway Sportsground College Road

Galway Ireland Tel

+353 91 561 568 +353 91 560 097

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TICKET OFFICE Tel

+353 91 561 568

www.connachtrugby.ie

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