Eager Muldoon wary of Toulouse

CONNACHT flanker John Muldoon has warned his team-mates they cannot afford a repeat of the small mistakes that he believed cost them an opening Heineken Cup victory over Harlequins when they meet Toulouse in Galway this weekend.

The Irish province is set to make its home debut in the competition in its 100th European match this Saturday, with the pick of opponents in four-time champions Toulouse. And while it will be a landmark occasion in front of a sell-out 9,000 crowd at the Sportsground, Muldoon is wary of the type of lapses in concentration that frustrated their valiant efforts at the Stoop last Friday night in a 25-17 defeat to the English league leaders.

“We know small mistakes will cost us,” Muldoon said of the visit of Toulouse, “and we also know that, if we switch off like we did in the latter part of the first half against Quins, Toulouse will put points on us. If we perform like we did in that period, we could be down by 30 points.

“It was a very disappointed dressing room at the Stoop. We went to Quins with the belief that we could cause an upset and the game was in the balance until the end but the quality of Nick Evans showed through. He only missed one kick and, even with the penalties we gave away in our own half, his kicks to touch were superb. I think he was probably the deciding factor between the two teams.”

Muldoon could not betray his frustration when he spoke of Connacht’s missed opportunity against Quins.

“We’ve moved on a lot. We’re sick of the old tap on the back and ‘Well done, unlucky’ or ‘Great performance’. We’re sick of it, but we’re still somewhat there. Each year we’re getting better but it’s frustrating.

“On this occasion I felt we were the more entertaining team. I think we played the better style of rugby but Nick Evans kicked his goals. We can say we scored two tries to their one but he didn’t miss bar one kick so they deserved to win.

“We’ll take a lot out of the game but a lot of people don’t understand that we felt we could go there and win. We certainly feel like we left the result behind us.”

The visit of Toulouse this weekend has been the talk of Galway since the draw was made and Muldoon is as excited as anyone in the province.

“Toulouse have been the best team in Europe for the last 17 years,” he said.

“But getting ourselves up for these Heineken Cup games is not going to be hard — we are in the big competition now.

“We can’t wait, we have been waiting for it all season. It would have been great to have got a result in the first round but we’ll come out fighting, like we’ve always done. We had great support at Quins and hopefully we can give them something more to shout about this week. We are expecting 9,000 people to pack out the place. That will be the most we’ve ever had at the Sportsground and we are not expecting an easy atmosphere for them.”