Elwood: Bring on Toulouse

CONNACHT coach Eric Elwood is urging his team to step it up another gear for Toulouse’s visit this week after pushing Harlequins to the limit in their Heineken Cup debut.

Elwood says Connacht’s first performance in the competition came as no surprise to him, but the challenge now is to raise the bar higher when the European kingpins arrive in the west on Saturday.

“We firmly believe in what we are doing — people may not think we can compete against the likes of Harlequins or Toulouse, and that might happen, but we firmly believed we could have won that game, so I was not surprised,” he says. “People have every right to be proud and I am proud of the lads, but we were so disappointed because we genuinely felt we could have won — that is not being big-headed because that is not our business — but it was an opportunity. I have waited 16 years to get into the Heineken, so I am not going to be harsh on the boys — it was a fantastic effort, but we came up short and got nothing out of it.”