Connacht head coach Pete Wilkins has acknowledged that their 17-7 loss to Ulster has huge ramifications for their season as they now face an uphill battle to secure a knockout place in the URC and a spot in next season’s Champions Cup when they will be unveiling their €40m redevelopment of the Sportsground in Galway.
In the past three seasons the team finishing eighth and making the cut for the knockout stages and qualifying for the Champions Cup has needed 50, 48 and 50 points.
Connacht were poised to easily qualify when they accumulated 18 points after one-third of this URC season, with three wins from six games being augmented by six bonus points.
But now they have reached the halfway point still on 18 points, having failed to collect a single point from the home games against the Bulls and Ulster, either side of a loss to a seriously depleted Leinster side.
They have nine games remaining and, based on what it has taken to qualify in the past three years, probably need at least 30 points out of a possible 45. Five of those games will be away from home, including two in South Africa, while one of their four home matches will be against Munster at MacHale Park in Castlebar.
It’s now almost a year since the Sportsground was renamed Dexcom Stadium as part of the multi-million euro development but since beating Bristol Bears on the night of the announcement, they have played ten competitive matches there and lost five of them.
What’s disappointing Connacht fans the most is that the current squad is probably the best resourced, certainly in terms of cost, that they have ever assembled.
The side which started against Ulster contained eight senior internationals — it would have been nine if hooker Dave Heffernan not withdrawn — but they came off second best in nearly every department against an understrength Ulster side featuring a handful of academy players who came into this clash on the back of five successive defeats.
“We were well beaten and it’s a massive blow to our season,” said Wilkins. “Where we are at is not good enough, it’s very disappointing. But we’ve dug ourselves out of holes before.
“Any loss is disappointing but knowing the context of the impact it would have on our season if we won or lost, it’s massive and it adds to the frustration of the performance.
“We created some really good moments, particularly in that second half, but we’re either forcing a pass too many or just not aligned in terms of what we’re trying to achieve in that top third of the field and as a result of that, we coughed the ball up and we weren’t able to turn it into points.”
Connacht have won both Challenge Cup games to date and could make the Champions Cup next season — seen as crucial to selling what will be on offer in the new stand at Dexcom Stadium — by winning that tournament but they have never managed to reach the final despite playing more games in it than any other team in Europe.
Wilkins will be feeling the pressure and hasn’t given up on putting a run together in the league but the maths make it clear it will require something exceptional at this stage if they are to rally and make the cut.
“Well, I don’t think we’ll be writing off the URC,” added Wilkins. “I think where we find ourselves and certainly the last two weeks has been an enormous blow.
“But we certainly won’t be writing off the URC with half the games to come. As I said, we’ve dug ourselves out of holes before. The focus won’t change in that, but we’ll certainly need some picking up from this result and from this performance.”