My memory of away hec game was being an intercepted pass on Connacht try line sway from losing which was converted at other end for bp victory. Hardly comfortable but exciting definitely. Home league game was far from comfortable too. Year before Jarvis landes a pen from 10m inside own half to deny air on I first away victory in last game.

Connacht haven't played well in this fixture.

rossie wrote: Zebre will view Connacht as an opportunity to break their duck and will view last years games as wins that got away IMO.

Absolutely they will. Zebre were comfortably second best in both away games last year, but equally were very unfortunate not to beat us in at least one of the Sportsground games.

On the other hand Connacht will be targeting a 5-pointer, given our solid opening day record (7 wins from 10), as compared to Zebre (and their predecessors Aironi) who have had nightmare starts.

Zebroni opening day record:

2012 lost 37-6 away to Dragons
2011 lost 32-9 away to Scarlets
2013 lost 33-17 away to Munster

and their coach is Jeremy Davidson, that explains the Irish colony!

Don't know much about Tarbes ATM. Beziers are fallen giants of French rugby and aurillac narrowly missed out on top14 promotion last year AFAIK. Denis fogarty played with them then and Brian Hayes is with them now.

I think I've said it before but personally I'm somewhat worried about Zebre, I don't want us to be the first team to lose to them and playing them 8 times in 2 seasons really improves their chances of that. Add in the first game of the season when anything can happen and it feels iffy. Their preseason games have been against easy teams but after last season they needed some wins to lift their spirits, whereas we could be 0/3 in pre-season.

Brave words there clan man. Zebre will view Connacht as an opportunity to break their duck and will view last years games as wins that got away IMO. Connacht can expect a big battle there.

In the overall season I predict a serious battle for 7th between Treviso, Edinburgh, cardiff , dragons and Connacht. I think zebre will have a say in who finishes where also.
40 pts the Connacht target for me with minimum of 7 home wins.

I still remain optimistic that we can finish higher in the league this year, we'll know for sure where we're at 3 or 4 games into the league campaign. the backs we have this year will do damage to most teams and defensively last year we were pretty good, all we need to do is make sure that we can compete at set-piece, mauls and rucks. I'm still worried about the front row strength, Nathan White needs to stay fit and play at least 60 minutes at full pace, as good as he was for us last year I did notice that he got tired very quickly in games and that really shouldn't happen in professional rugby even for a front rower, unless he was carrying an injury.

We've been handed one of the easier starts that I can remember, lessons should have been learnt from last year, that game at home against Cardiff was terrible, there was no game plan and we lacked focus and concentration. If we can accomplish this then we'll beat Zebre easily enough

Maybe a bit early to start this thread, but here's a brief update on Zebre's preseason:

They're been in camp the last fortnight after a 3 week French tour where they defeated some reasonable ProD2 sides - beat Aurillac 17-14 (July 27), beat Beziers 14-12 (Aug. 3), and beat Tarbes 20-17 (Aug. 9) - and finish their preseason with games against Italian champions Mogliano (Aug. 23), and Calvisano (Aug. 30).

No idea whether they'll be any good, but they'll not be underdone.