Ulster Rugby vs Connacht

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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.
39
OPPOSITION
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.
connachtrugby
Connachtrugby
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
Fax +353 91 560 097
TICKET OFFICE
Tel +353 91 561 568
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