Who is making the calls on the pitch It is all fine having a game plan and trying to run in try's I think its time for 10 man rugby lets get the points on the board and make the other team chase the game at this point we can get the backs into it. Really i think it is up to 8 9 10 to call how the game is going to be played and to play what is in front of them
Yours Truly
typical supporter who thinks he knows everything

Play what you see

clan clover wrote: I braved looking at the papers today and it was the same old guff coming from EE, same as last week and the week before, as mentioned the casual supporter will walk with the way we are playing and the lack of results.

You mean something like this....

www.breakingnews.ie/sport/elwood-frustra...oor-form-530119.html

Elwood frustrated by Connacht’s poor form
28/11/2011 - 13:00:50

Connacht coach Eric Elwood has admitted that he is concerned after seeing his charges going down 17-6 to the Ospreys at home on Saturday.

Connacht could not overcome an Ospreys side that was missing 18 players due to international duty and injuries. Tries from Matthew Morgan and Sonny Parker opened up a lead the home team could not claw back.

The result made it seven consecutive defeats in all competitions for Connacht and Elwood admits the players and coaches are getting increasingly frustrated with the poor run of form.

"We're not in a happy place at the moment. We're putting good phases of play together but then turn it over or are just not finishing the chances. That's frustrating and we need to learn from game to game.

"There are games every week now so you need to take the lesson from one and correct it for the next, so all our attention is on Treviso next week.

"It's tough, but things are never easy here. We targeted this one and we are disappointed to get nothing for our big effort. We just have to dust ourselves down and get ready - it's all we can do. It's our job.”

Connacht find themselves ninth in the RaboDirect PRO 12 and bottom of the Heineken Cup’s Pool 6 where they have yet to register their first point.

Elwood knows that if his team can’t cut out the basic errors they made last weekend they will continue to struggle against the calibre of opposition they encounter in both competitions.

"It's disappointing. We gave away two soft scores and when we got into the opposition '22', we lost the ball six or seven times in contact.

"If you get chances like that, you've got to take them. We have to be more clinical, more ruthless and more physical."

I agree about the pods, twice on Saturday we formed pods to the left when we were yards away from the try line and the Ospreys moved all there defenders to that side, when I say all I mean all and left the blindside totally defender free and we played the ball left where they were all waiting. Now if you are a coach sitting high up in the stand and you see this happen once, you get word down to the scrumhalf at the next break in play. I can bet my house this did not happen. Any coach will tell you to keep the scoreboard ticking over if you up the field you need to come away with points from what ever means.
What has happened to the reverse pass, do scrum halfs not practice it anymore is it frowned upon on the training pitch or something. I braved looking at the papers today and it was the same old guff coming from EE, same as last week and the week before, as mentioned the casual supporter will walk with the way we are playing and the lack of results.

There is a real problem with the team playing by the playbook and not what's in front of them, there just doesn't seem to be the leadership in the backs. We're wining ball aplenty in every game, but our use of it is absoutely criminal.

As I flagged after the Quins game our reluctance to take drop goal shots is another area that is damning. It all indicates a backline playing to orders rather than one with the confidence to trust their own vision and teammates inside and outside them.

Our forward carrying is to predictable also, you can see our forwards forming pods (from the moon) as soon as one of our carriers goes to ground, invevitably the ball is then shuffled one out to the static pod who go to ground a metre on. How many snipes have we seen by our scrumhalves or scrumhalf breaks with a reverse pass to forward hitting angle at a good tilt?

Too much of our play is completley static, slow ball being shunted on to players standing still. How many times have you seen Gav Duffy come into the line at pace/angle or our wingers? You’ll see them run back a fielded ball for sure, and more often than not then kick as they approach contact…

There is a problem with our backs coaching/instructions that needs to be resolved ASAP. Whether it’s personell changes at coaching level or reviewing the philosiphy that we are approaching games with. And it needs to happen now and not at season end, because the momentum they have generated the one that brought 2500 extra season tickets will not be replicated with the current style of play.

Which is why I think Henry is a 13 not a 12, he has the feet, the side step and the off load but as you rightly pointed out no one bothers been ready to receive they are more interested in going to ground and starting a ruck. I see no wrap around moves, I see no staggered moves, any dummy runners are by accident rather then design, rarely do we see a forward in the back line with the plan to off load in the tackle. The thing that galls me is , when the game plan clearly is not working we don't change it, most teams we have played against have used the rush defence system and we have not planned for it or figured away around it.

No point in Henry playing an offloading game if the rest of the team is playing something else.

So either he's the only one who is listening to the tactics or else he's the only one who's not!!! (considering that he's been dropped, I would hazard a guess that it's the later)

Anyway we wont see much of him barring injury, there are now 3 good players ahead of him, griffin mcsharry and tonetti.
Mcsharry tackles like Keith Mathews(legend).

ummm, wrote: I haven't read any match reports. Why? Because right now I just don't have the stomach for any more sound bites about how we'll learn from it and 'but for 10 minutes...' blah blah blah.

We were shit. We have now gone over 200 minutes without scoring a try in the Pro12, which is just inexcusable. We may have had our hand forced in terms of changes from the team that played Toulouse, and a brand new second row held together with cheese and string isn't the greatest situation to be in, but that doesn't excuse the rest. The players at the end of the day are the ones not crossing the try line, and we can't just sit back and wait for Griff to come back from injury, we need everyone plugging away. And by everyone, that includes the staff. Millard needs to prove his worth, right now he is not covering himself in glory.

At the Toulouse match, from my viewpoint I saw that Henry has dazzling feet, they are a blur, Jason Robinson-esqe. Possibly sparkly enough to send coaches a quiver and convince them that he doesn't lack everything else. Problem is they're only going sideways. But for crying out loud, as bad as that is, the number of times Henry commits two tacklers and is still looking for the offload only for there to be no-one on his shoulder is unforgivable. McCrea has been the only player to score off this kind of move all season. It could be a primary method of attack if beaten into the players hard enough.

Other teams and players might get themselves up for HEC matches and not be so interested in the pro12, but we cannot afford ourselves that luxury and I'm afraid that's what looks like to have happened this week.

Finally, i was wondering was i watching a different Henry to the one being discussed on here, totally agree with you ummm, almost every tackle Henry is looking to offload and as stated apart from McCrea nobody has been there and i personally can't understand it, is this not what video analysis is for?

Cant help but feel that some of our signing this year were just making up the numbers. From what i've seen of Mick Kearney he's seriously impressed me, more so with his attitude. In the pre-season game in Athlone i was watching them during the warm-ups and Kearney was barking orders and berating senior players who were making mistakes. Would have been much better in the long term to see Kearney get more game time this year than have brought in Dave Gannon.

I haven't read any match reports. Why? Because right now I just don't have the stomach for any more sound bites about how we'll learn from it and 'but for 10 minutes...' blah blah blah.

We were shit. We have now gone over 200 minutes without scoring a try in the Pro12, which is just inexcusable. We may have had our hand forced in terms of changes from the team that played Toulouse, and a brand new second row held together with cheese and string isn't the greatest situation to be in, but that doesn't excuse the rest. The players at the end of the day are the ones not crossing the try line, and we can't just sit back and wait for Griff to come back from injury, we need everyone plugging away. And by everyone, that includes the staff. Millard needs to prove his worth, right now he is not covering himself in glory.

At the Toulouse match, from my viewpoint I saw that Henry has dazzling feet, they are a blur, Jason Robinson-esqe. Possibly sparkly enough to send coaches a quiver and convince them that he doesn't lack everything else. Problem is they're only going sideways. But for crying out loud, as bad as that is, the number of times Henry commits two tacklers and is still looking for the offload only for there to be no-one on his shoulder is unforgivable. McCrea has been the only player to score off this kind of move all season. It could be a primary method of attack if beaten into the players hard enough.

Other teams and players might get themselves up for HEC matches and not be so interested in the pro12, but we cannot afford ourselves that luxury and I'm afraid that's what looks like to have happened this week.

Terrible F*****g rubbish.Osprey's were there for the taking.There's a lot of respect going for Connacht at the moment with the hype.Games like this are very damaging.Outhalf need badly .One that can pick off a drop goal here and there.How many times did we lose the ball in there 22 ?!?! Ref was terrible but we were worse.

:sick: left the ground last night demoralised, so many unforced errors, never looked like scoring a try, ospreys not much better and were there for the taking, I agree with briefne in that we are in danger of losing all the momentum from a good start and all the HC hype. Felt that last night was an important marker for the season as a win would have us challenging for a high mid table position but a loss puts us back to bottom 3 dog fight. We need to "front up etc"

That harkened back to the worst of the bad old days I'm afraid. A few players need their cards seriously marked by Eric. Far too many players basic skills broke down under the Ospreys defenisve pressure. Yeah sure we were missing Macca and Swifty, but we actually won plenty enough ball to win the game. We were just absolutely clueless how to use it to score...

Surprised and dissapointed at the use of the bench. McCrea should have been on at halftime for Tuohy who was clueless with the ball, back to his ponderous worst in possession. He's got plenty of Gas, but didn't once take on his man with any sort of conviction.

Henry Fa'afili, sorry I've bitten my lip this season but what is he supposed to be bringing to the backline? Offence? Defence? What precisely? Did he actually beat his man at any point, or did I just slip into a Coma? This guy got 10 caps with Samoa how precisely, not playing like he has for us that's for sure...

Miah should probably drop down to AIL and get some games under his belt, get a bit of confidence going in his game. He's back fit but coming back into some huge games, he's obviously not in the right place mentally at the moment with this game.

Tiernan had a big wake up call tonight, one of his poorest games for us. But it will do him good, give him a reality check.

Over 4000 in the ground tonight as well, the lads owe these guys a comprehensive performance against Treviso if they're to keep coming (becasue season tickets or no people will not keep coming to watch that dire sh*te). You're literally talking nothing less than a bonus point win next week

The ref didn't do us any favours but neither did the high number of errors by our lads!

Some short clips of the game:

Another depressing performance. Really rudderless tonight. Ospreys were fairly average, was a winnable game but we never convinced. So much possession and territory but no ideas, frequent needless turnovers, wrong option on countless occasions and the two tries were again extremely soft even if Ospreys took them ruthlessly.

Its past time the team was given a serious shake up. Why were Jarvis, Tonetti and Moore up in Dublin playing AIL 1B game today?

Half backs were very poor again. None of the 4 delivered tonight.

Agree with simpleton, pack doesn't seem to be working well as a unit, seems no leadership in the pack or plan from close in. Countless incidences of players going on their own, holding on and penalty against us. Our play in their 22 was appalling. Kearney did well and from the few games I've seen of him looks ready for more involvement at this level and George battled well but he is most effective at 8. Unlucky to be missing the two lads but again tonight just shows how badly they are needed especially McCarthy.

Backs are really suffering, again we saw bits of what McSharry and O'Halloran can do but O'Halloran had to come well in field to make anything for himself and any half break he made lacked the support to take it further.

Depressing.

Yep...Kearney is a young, athletic, and hungry player in the second row who looks like he's going to be ready sooner rather than later. I was very impressed by him in Dublin in the pre-season game against the Ireland XV. Swifty's getting way up there in age now, so we need to hang on to Kearney -- he'll be a really good one.

Meant to say Nikoras kicking from hand murdered us, not sure if that was a tactic or what but didn't look too clever.

Lots of very good individual efforts but the units were rubbish.

Toh Gav mcsharry ah you wilko Gannon flavin all showed well as did reynecke Loughney and McGuire when they came on. Special mention to Kearney who looked like a really good player.

Dan McFarland would need to seriously address our packs attempts to rumble towards the line, it's not a -_-ing pod if there is only one man in it.

Where from here? Jarvis Mcrea Tonnetti, reynecke deserves to get a start (no reflection on fla). Leave George at 8 mull at 6. Cross our fingers for Joc and Andrew Browne to get back quick.