pro 14 Round 10

[The Seeker]

That Connacht win over Leinster was a big surprise. Congratulations!

 

[The Seeker]

Like most of you, I'm looking forward to the upcoming Ulster vs Leinster match. That should be a real slobberknocker.

 

[The Seeker]

I was hoping Benetton would win their match with Zebre, but the boys from Parma are showing improvement.

 

[The Seeker]

I only watched the highlights this week, but from what I saw the Ospreys made it look pretty easy in their win over Cardiff.

 

[paddybrown]

To be fair Ulster deserved win but was always expected that they'd beat us as we had mainly our back up team and they had alot of first team. Interestingly alot of media thought we actually had more reason to be happy last night and Ulster actually were a bit down over failure to get Bonus Point.
Leinster were always at risk due to issues with covid and IRFU policy over Xmas. Playing with no 10 didn't help either

True enough. We rested a lot of players for the Connacht match, but other than Kyle McCall, who hadn't played for a while, everyone stepped up we were still able to put out a pretty strong team. For you, we put out all our available Ireland internationals, and I thought we were very good in the first half, not so good in the second. Once Coetzee came on, I think everybody wanted to give him the ball as much as possible, so there was less spinning the ball out to the wings, which was a winning strategy in the first half. Also, Munster got more into the game.

Leinster clearly had a weakened team against Connacht, and Connacht took full advantage. You're right, starting with Sexton, knowing how fragile he is these days, and not bringing a spare out half was crazy. Were both the Byrne brothers down with covid? But Luke McGrath did his best to make up the difference, and their runners were hard to stop once they got up a head of steam. I'm sure they'll pick a stronger team for Ulster next week, and they'll have a point to prove. But we came very close to beating them in Dublin in the Heineken Cup quarter finals in 2019 - would have done if Stockdale hadn't dropped the ball over the line - so fingers crossed.