Drift over as Connacht embrace a brand new dawn

Connacht head coach Stuart Lancaster after his side's victory. Pic: Thomas Flinkow/Sportsfile

Saturday night at the Dexcom Stadium and, if the dipping sun fitted neatly with the ground’s nod to so many departing players at the final whistle then Connacht’s performance against Munster was proof that the province is on the cusp of a bright new dawn.

Eleven Connacht players will be clearing out their lockers in the spankingly new and spacious dressing-rooms in the near future. 

Among them will be out-half Jack Carty who has spent his entire career in Galway and known times good and bad.

Carty sat in the bowels of a sleek Clan Stand that exists as testament to the club’s ambitions afterwards and remembered his days playing at the old Sportsground from U12 level and with no more than a man and his dog looking on from the tiniest of terraces.

“Three steps!”

He saw how, when the Clan Terrace was erected, it punched above its weight and witnessed how its demolition and the vacuum that introduced had left Connacht and their fans a tad adrift while managing something of a transition on the park.

Now the new stand is there, and Stuart Lancaster too, and everything is looking up after a period of drift. A full house of over 12,000 people soundtracked the 26-7 defeat of their neighbours at the weekend.

“There’s an attachment with the fans again,” said Carty. “You can see from this evening and [against] Glasgow and [against] Leinster. They just want something to hold on to. They want a team that will fight for them.

“I think that’s what we’ve started to do, particularly this season. It’s such a wonderful place to be when it’s like that: very similar to 2016 [when Connacht won the PRO12] and parts of 2019. It’s just about keeping it going.”

Carty got to come on late doors to ride the waves generated by Connacht all the way home.

They had been utterly superior in every aspect for the vast majority of this interpro, especially so in the first-half and long before Diarmuid Barron’s 20-minute red.

Up and comers like Billy Bohan, Sam Illo and Harry West had shone by then. The back row trio of Cian Prendergast, Shamus Hurley-Langton and Sean Jansen were immense, but then there wasn’t really a single man that you couldn’t have singled out for praise.

Carty and Denis Buckley and the others destined for new pastures will leave knowing Connacht are building something that could match their new ground’s majesty. Head coach Lancaster was very clearly satisfied with most of what he saw here.

This was their seventh win in eight URC ties and the Englishman was thrilled with how they dictated things when choosing to face into a strong wind in the first half. There were sublime, standout moments but it was the “one per centers” that really pleased.

There is caution to all this as well.

Lancaster intends taking his side “back to zero” this week as they go about riding all this momentum and getting the win in Edinburgh needed if they are to step up from ninth and claim one of those crucial places in the ‘Race to the Eight’.

Ulster and Cardiff are one point to the north, Munster just two. The Lions, who sit in fifth, are just four to the good on them. It may be that Connacht need just the basic win in Scotland, or they might require another try bonus-point with it. But do they chase that?

“It’s a dangerous game if you go down that route,” said Lancaster.

Edinburgh have nothing to play for.

Twelfth in the table, they have won their last three league games against sides loitering in the same lower reaches of the standings and maybe those wins and the lack of any pressure could work in their favour.

Connacht know too that Ulster have a joker card in the form of a Challenge Cup final in Bilbao which, should they win it, would earn them a Champions League qualification spot in the event they finished outside the URC top eight.

It really is in Connacht’s interest to amass as much as they can at The Hive.

“We’ll have to rip in, for sure, to win,” said Lancaster. “You are not going to go up there to defend. A bit like this one. You can’t get to games like this in the latter stages of the season and hope to win. You’ve got to go and attack it.”