Didn't see it, not too bothered by it. If the didn't get upset when we were blowing a winnable position then I'd be dissapointed...

You can taste the dejection right at the start of the post game interview with Rob Murphy

www.irishrugby.ie/matchdaytv/index/index/id/9673

Another tough day in a Connacht fans life.

Best side now available to us IMO
Wilko
Flavin
????
McCarthy
Swifty
Ofisa
George
Joc
Pod
Jarvis
Mathews
Griffin
Ohalloran
Mcrea / Touhy
Duffy

I would consider looking at mcrea or duffy at 12 for a bit cos Henry is a traffic light stuck on green for  opposition offences and we could play touhy on the wing and o halloran at 15.

I'd be one for trying McCrea at 12, he's a big lad and has a bit of gas. He played there last year for Malone so he knows what its about.

We can't drop Muldoon, fair enough he made a mistake for their 2nd try but he offers us too much in terms leadership, workrate and destructiveness to even consider dropping him. However, when Andrew Browne is back there'll be a good battle on for 6 and 2nd row which will be great to have the options

Anyone notice and argument between Eric and backs coach Billy Millard towards the end of the 1st half. It was plain to see Eric had a bee in his bonnet about something coming down to the side of the pitch before half time, he went straight out to Billy and it was clear there was a disagreement.

Didn't see it, not too bothered by it. If the didn't get upset when we were blowing a winnable position then I'd be dissapointed...

Another tough day in a Connacht fans life.

Best side now available to us IMO
Wilko
Flavin
????
McCarthy
Swifty
Ofisa
George
Joc
Pod
Jarvis
Mathews
Griffin
Ohalloran
Mcrea / Touhy
Duffy

I would consider looking at mcrea or duffy at 12 for a bit cos Henry is a traffic light stuck on green for  opposition offences and we could play touhy on the wing and o halloran at 15.

Anyone notice and argument between Eric and backs coach Billy Millard towards the end of the 1st half. It was plain to see Eric had a bee in his bonnet about something coming down to the side of the pitch before half time, he went straight out to Billy and it was clear there was a disagreement.

I agree with Porter and Timmy, the half back partnership is not controlling the game. But you must look around as well, its the nature of the human watching to watch where the action is i.e the ball. If any of our backs or game managers bothered their arse to look around the pitch while play was on they would have seen how the Cardiff defence worked. Because Cardiff were allowed to be offside at the rucks it made defence easy against a team that moved sideways, but any video analyst worth his salt would have known exactly how the ref operated and exactly how the oppostition worked before the match kicked off and even if he did'nt by the end of the first half he would identifed areas to attack, instead Cardiff did the first half homework and came out with there new found knowledge and scored 14 points in four minutes, we then continued the same old plan spread it wide to where there is either no attacking player or worse two defenders to our one . That game was won going into the break and like the Leinster game we then decided at half time, no look we have to give them the four points.

What gets me is all this Rise Up Front up malarky , its a great Slogan I admit and very good for the image, but the only people rising up are the supporters as witnessed by another great crowd on Saturday. But the management are asking people to travel to games at the sportsground where the management/team throw up a spectacle like last night, people will get caught once maybe twice but then you lose them and lose them for a very long time. I feel for this team when we play in Toulouse if we continue with the toilet lack of tactics and planning it could easily end up been a record score. Bring back Keith Matthews as quickly as Possible, only way we can get the back line moving as he had no problem directing the traffic.

Thats exactly what I'm alluding to Timmy. We have seriously competitive and game set of forwards, back 5 especially who can mix it with anyone. When the chance comes, we need to be patient, keep it tight, and it's up to Murphy to see this, organise the pack and get them in their pods and bash ball. Instead, we do a couple of phases and Murphy whips it wide with static ball when the opposition defence are aligned and all the forwards aren't tied in. He should be made watch videos of Stringer to see how he does it. Stringer would roar and shout at his forwards, direct them exactly where he wanted them, and control everything. We see none of this from Murphy, and for a man of his experience it's pretty poor. There were times when we ended up with one forward showing for the ball and going into contact with nobody on his shoulder. TJ got penalised for being isolated, Rodney saw he was isolated a couple of times and ended up trying wild offloads. Frank has to get them organised and get us going through the phases and keeping out patience. We seem to panic after 3 or 4 phases and feel we must go wide and score a try. It's so frustrating to watch week in week out

i agree with all yere comments. not enuf direction at 10. in fact some of decisions noc made with ball in hand were baffling and team even seemed confused. some terrible passing in backs also at vital times. also agree that refs interpretation of offside and scrum left a lot to be desired. in fact he was very harsh on connacht and quite lenient on cardiff throughout game. i saw some whinging here about refs before and am starting to see what they r on about. that said game was winnable with a bith more leadership and composure. the maul worked well 4 connacht and good to c they r working on it because given the conditions in galway a lot of the time its the way forward. they need to work harder at their pick and drive game tho and feel this is where they lost game last nite. murphy needs to boss his pack and force them forward at ruck time. he doesnt need ball in hand 5/10 even 20m out until rite time. he shud make forwards put it up jumper until all defenders r sucked in and then move it. muldoon. ofisa, naupu, mike mc, swift, wilk, flav, ahyou all can carry in tight and need to front up and its murphys job to make them do it. as a munster man (now also attending sportsground wit connacht son) i remember stringer directing and bullying munster pack into doing the hard yards and it worked. it doesnt have to be pretty and every yard counts. the current pattern of play for irish teams of moving the ball quickly as far away from the ruck area as quikly as possible is only leading to turnovers and allowing forwards to behave as glorified 3/4s on bad das and renaging on their primary responsibilities of ball retenion/winning ang making hard yards. to hilight what i mean look at ireland v aus in worldcup(great) everyone did their job and then ireland v wales where pack ignored all basics and stood off like backs waiting to recieve ball. munster built brand that it now is based on an excellent hard working pack and brilliant leadership at 9 and 10 primarilly. they have gone back a bit as present because the packs work rate is not what it was but mainly because peter stringer is no longer at 9. he is prob the most underrated player of the irish pro era. i saw the desire in the connacht pack last nite to do the work and they left everything out there. they just need leadership/game plan or whatever u want to call it to be allowed to do what appears to come naturally to them.

Agree on Matthews Borders. I felt we really lacked flair at 12 last year and we needed something new. However, Matthews is a super defender. He might only be 14 odd stone but he tackles 2 stone above his weight. Fa'afili is a very poor defender. We need Matthews back for the big games. I fear Toulouse cutting Fa'afili to ribbons. This won't happen with Matthews. Benson Stanley would have made a huge difference for us.

Nikora looked off the pace tonight but I'd start him next week v Ulster. Reason being is that I feel he offers alot more on the gainline. Fair enough it didn't work tonight which was understandable given his long lay off but at least he's not afraid to keep the defence honest and we've seen in the past he can make breaks. NOC offers nothing in this regard. He shovels the ball on and the opposing defence can just move sideways all the time making it easier for them. I feel sorry for Griffin at the minute outside NOC and Fa'afili. He's a great prospect but he's not getting any decent ball.

I feel ye're frustration. Great chance to open a gap on the likes of Dragons, Edinburgh etc. and most importantly heap pressure on an out of sorts Ulster ahead of the interpro in such a tight league. A win can cover over a lot, in many ways this was a step up on the 2 previous home games and the atrocious 2nd half against Leinster but its an 80+ minute game and a results business. Reminded me of a few of the home games during the Bradley era.

Got a great start and the two rolling mauls in the lead up to the 2nd try were superb. 17-6 probably flattered us at ht, (Cardiff blew a couple of good chances and missed 6 handy points) but it gave us the platform. The first 4/5 mins of the 2nd half was an embarrassment. Still we had enough to win.

In fairness most of the pack put in a good performance even with the late withdrawal of JOC, you could see George was limping near the end and probably they didn't want to have to play him for the full 80. Ah You still failing to convince though, struggling to replace Jamie Hagan who is now starring for Leinster A.

We have three out halfs in the squad but none of them are doing enough. I think Jarvis has the best raw materials of the 3 but requires work. O'Connor kicked his goals well tonight, but really offered nothing else. Nikora is only coming back but he's not a first choice 10 for me. I think we're seeing how much we're missing Keatley now.

12 and 14 need to start justifying their signings, Vainikolo was only making his first start but on that evidence, Tuohy or McCrea ahead of him at 14 for me. Hope to see Keith Matthews back soon also. A lot stronger defensively than Fa'aili and although Matthews doesn't have great hands, he's a better offloader of the ball. Fa'aili is being picked for pure power and teams have it easily sussed. O'Halloran is really developing with regular game time, deserves to be playing in a better side, him and Carr on the two wings would have been fantastic.

We need to try and bounce back as the games are coming thick and fast but Harlequins and Toulouse are a major step up on this kind of level as will most of the Rabo teams when things settle down. No doubting the commitment of the vast majority of this team but there needs to be questions asked about our game management as mentioned above. We really lack direction. Much as Muldoon is a fantastic player to see one of our leaders doing well to get back and deny a certain try and then making a desperate attempt to kick the ball when it wasn't on said a lot. Easy talk in the stand, but calm heads seem to go out the window with our players on an all too regular basis in the key positions.

Decent crowd again. Need to do more to keep them coming back though.

Nice Post P.B.

Cardiff were better than us tonight but we made some silly mistakes at times, 2 tries in 4 minutes at the start of the 2nd half killed us. Ref was atrocious as well, didn't realise we were playing offside til 72 minutes, Cardiff used it to their advantage and their defensive line spent the game 2 yards off, called a penalty in front of the posts for Parks to give Cardiff the lead for early engagement in a scrum which is a free kick offence.

All in all we lacked quality, Fa'afili was beaten all ends up everytime someone ran at him and missed alot of 1st up tackles. Vainikolo had a shocker. Real lack of quality at half back. Our half backs haven't finished a game yet, Eric needs to put trust in them or we're going nowhere. Pack were excellent, Swifty, McCarthy immense, but outside that we were cat. JOC pulling out before the game was a big blow. Poor officiating, stupid mistakes and lack of direction at 9 and 10 cost us. Again

Right where do we start ?????? Firstly who has told Ah -You that he is a ten ???? we have enough problems deciding who we should play in this position !!! as far as I am concerned the best 10 we have at the Club was playing in Ballymena today, NOC was ok place kicking, but his distribution was !!!!e, as for his kicking out of hand well I 'm saying F--k All. Nickora as I said earlier on this thread should have played more games at a lower level before being thrown into a RABO Direct fixture as important as this.He did not contribute anything to this game during the time he was on.
What did Vainekolo do ??????????? bugger all, he is not the Mesiah that some posters seemed to think he was !!! as far as I am concerned he is no better (until he proves himself) than any other wing we have at Connacht at this present time. 
I do appologise for the negativity but I am really p----d off with the points we are throwing away !! this was not, and I repeat not an unbeatable Blues Team,in fact they were very ordinary. But, they still outscored us points wise, they stuffed us in the possesion stats and also the territory stats. This is totally unacceptable when we are playing at home. Picking up bonus points on the road is all well and good but struggling to achieve a bonus point at home smacks of desperation.
Right rant over, let's all get beghind the team for the next fixture. Rise up Connacht.

This team doesn't belong anywhere near HEC rugby ATM, be an embarrassment to the brand.

If they are serious about increasing the support base and encouraging the extra support that has started coming this season then the game management has to improve. The first five minutes of the second half was appaling and if we play like that in Europe will see us humiliated. Don't know if it's the players or coaches, but it needs to be sorted. We score three points in the seond half after more possesion than we had in the first....

Ref probably did us a favour and saved us from ourselves, then.

Very disappointed with that. Blues were average, we spent what felt like the majority of the match in their half, quite a lot in their 22, we had numerous attacking chances, we had a man advantage and we had... nothing. No leadership, no ideas, silly errors. Awful.