Connacht rebuild continues on the pitch after stadium reopening
A view of Dexcom Stadium during Connacht v Leinster. Pic: ©INPHO/James Crombie
Event management is an endless list of boxes to tick. So imagine how many thousands more needed to be crossed off before an opening night like Saturday’s when Connacht’s state-of-the-art stand was opened to the public for the very first time.
Stewards and security were stationed at unfamiliar spots. Spectators were chaperoned into new rooms smelling of fresh paint. Beer taps flowed with abandon for the first time, but there is always one vagary that can’t be secured.
Stuart Lancaster’s side was in good nick with close to an hour played two days ago. They were 20-13 ahead on the back of a scrappy first-half and a dominant start to the second. Three Leinster tries inside 15 minutes changed everything.
The last dozen minutes were an act of sporting suffocation as Leinster protected an eleven-point lead on a soggy Galway evening in front of a record crowd of 12,481 at a Dexcom Stadium that had until then been alive with endless possibilities.
It made for a bittersweet night for Stuart Lancaster and everyone associated with Connacht, the head coach calling spades nothing but spades afterwards while, at the same time, stressing that this was a beginning of something rather than an end.
“Yeah, the energy was huge, and you can't thank [the fans] enough for turning out that way, and that's why it feels so gut-wrenching not to have actually delivered for the supporters, because we know how much it means to them.
“But they'll stay behind us because they can see there's a team growing and they know that we have a period of transition taking place. We've got some great Connacht stalwarts who are coming to the end of their careers and we've got some great young lads coming through.
“So when you build a stadium, you've got to start at the bottom and build some strong foundations and I feel we're building those. But it doesn't lessen the pain of defeat because you want to win in the here and now and build for the future at the same time.
“I'm not interested in just building for the future.” Well, he is really.
Two URC wins in nine games tell it like it is. The table, as the saying goes, doesn’t lie. This is Year One in the Lancaster Project out west and it’s instructive to look north when assessing just where he and Connacht are right now.
Richie Murphy endured a tough, tough first campaign in charge of Ulster but he has turned a corner with them this last five months as a team brimming with youth and potential starts to deliver in the league and in the Challenge Cup.
Lancaster has been talking about the need to blood the youngsters for a while now. Injuries to stalwarts like Mack Hansen and Shayne Bolton have accelerated that process but then that’s always the case in a game as physical as rugby.
Connacht took that seven-point second-half lead in the third quarter at the weekend. It was scored by young Harry West who took the last pass off the wing from Finn Treacy. This was two men for the future doing the business in the here and now.
“We are throwing some lads in at the deep end,” said the head coach. “Someone sent me the Leinster squad before the game with the number of caps these players have for them. I’m looking at Harry West versus Garry Ringrose, for example.
“You forget how much experience a lot of those young Leinster lads have accumulated over a long time, Charlie Tector and people like that included. We are a little bit behind where they are in terms of the development of our young players, which is obvious.
“So, Harry, Billy Bohan, Finn, [Cathal Forde]is only 24. So you have a lot of young lads in there learning some painful lessons, but on the positive side they are lessons that will stand to them and Connacht in the future.
“I am very optimistic about where we are going and this place is only going to help us,” he said of the province’s impressive new surrounds. “But it still doesn’t cheer me up at the moment.”Â
S Gilbert; S Jennings, H West, C Forde, F Treacy; J Ioane, C Blade; B Bohan, D Tierney-Martin, S Illo; J Murphy, D Murray; C Prendergast, P Boyle, S Jansen.
B Aki for Forde and J Aungier for Illo (both 10-19 and 50); D Buckley for Bohan (49); J Joyce for Murray and S O’Brien for Boyle (60); J Carty for Ioane (64); E De Buitlear for Tierney-Martin and B Murphy for Blade (both 73).
C Frawley; J Kenny, G Ringrose, C Tector, J Lowe; H Byrne, F Gunne; J Boyle, G McCarthy, N Smyth; RG Snyman, J Ryan; A Soroka, W Connors, C Doris.
J Cahir for Boyle (20); D Mangan for Soroka (45-55 and 60); R Kelleher for McCarthy, A Sparrow for Smyth and S Penny for Connors (all 49); L McGrath for Gunne (56); B Deeny for Snyman (73); R Moloney for Kenny (78).
E Cross (Ire).
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