| Against the head By Johnny O’Connor
It was a long journey back to West London after our shattering Heineken
Cup defeat in south Wales on Sunday. While our hopes were high of maintaining
our interest in the competition until at least the New Year the truth is
we were simply not good enough.
Fair play to Simon Easterby and the boys at Llanelli — they thoroughly
deserved their victory as we just did not play well enough and even though
it was quite foggy that was simply no excuse for how badly we performed.
The Scarlets are sides we should be capable of beating and after this latest
defeat other players —including Eoin Reddan and Peter Bracken — are sure
to get an opportunity to impress this Sunday in the return game.
All these lads deserve their chance and I’m sure they’ll do well. We
are a far better team than the way we played at Stradey Park where we didn’t
deserve to win the game nor even get a bonus point. This defeat has certainly
been a painful lesson for us but we now have to focus on a number of tough
games in the Premiership around the holiday period including our trip to
the Madejski Stadium on New Year’s Eve.
London Irish maintained their unbeaten record in the European Challenge
Cup after a close 29-21 victory over Agen. The Exiles are just one of the
impressive Premiership sides in this year’s competition.
Elsewhere my old team Connacht could face a struggle after losing their
unbeaten record against Worcester Warriors at Sixfields. Michael Bradley’s
team must exact their revenge immediately at the Sportsground this weekend.
It should be quite a weekend for rugby in Galway with an AIB Cup tie
between Galweigans and junior club Cashel from Tipperary also taking place.
Galweigans are also one of my former clubs. I’m always keen to hear their
results in Division 1 of the AIB League each week although like Connacht
their league form is far from impressive.
Elsewhere in the Heineken Cup Munster made no mistake on their trip to
Newport on Saturday after running in three tries. While many believed they
should have gone all out for the bonus point a 24-8 victory in Rodney Parade
is far from being a bad result. Sale continue to set the pace in Pool 1
with three victories.
However it was Leinster who really impressed against Bourgoin at the
RDS. After their opening round defeat by Bath, the Lions have recovered
well and look likely to challenge Bath for the leadership of Pool 5.
However the most exciting game of the weekend took place at Ravehill
on Friday evening where hosts Ulster came from behind to defeat Saracens.
Both sides meet again at Vicarage Raod this weekend where the battle for
second spot behind Biarritz has really hotting up in Pool 4.
All three provincial sides are still very much in contention for a quarter-final
place and will be looking ahead to the final three rounds with justifiable
optimism.
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