Nobody wants to prop up the table!

It was a long and trying season for Connacht rugby and while ultimately us loyal fans were given a silver lining to cling to, there are still plenty of worrying aspects of the season to mull over for the summer. Eric Elwood came in with a lot of talk early season about how Connacht were going to step out of the shadows and play, home and away, and ultimately this took a lot out of the lads on the pitch, with certain players being asked to tog out indefinitely (more of which anon...). However, while some players were being played to death in certain positions, a cloud of uncertainty seemed to descend upon Elwood and his buddies when it came to selection in other key areas of the pitch, most notably at prop and half-back. In mitigation for this, the departure of the 'Galway Four' - Hagan, Cronin, Keatley and Carr - left a serious hole on the team sheet and, while it would be easy to simply excuse the big man his selection mistakes in early season because of this, perhaps a more careful analysis might help shed some light on 'The Trials and Tribulations of Eric Elwood' this season. In the hopes of not getting a punch for slagging off the big man, I'm gonna start by focusing on an area that ultimately proved quite successful for us this season: THE FRONT ROW

EE: Stumped!

Early-season Galway can't have been a fun place to be for poor EE. He had some big decisions to make regarding the team and whether certain new additions to the squad were going to cut the mustard. Elwood must have feared that the team would slip into the old routine of having journeymen just plugging gaps in the team, and I'm pretty sure he was aware that he needed to unearth players who were going to be mainstays in their positions. In this light, huge emphasis was placed on young Rodney 'Ah not You again' Ah You, a tighthead who had come here via Canterbury and had successfully represented New Zealand at underage level. [Mind you, doesn't every junior All Black taste success?!] Poor oul Rodney just wasn't up to it in the tight exchanges as well as not looking entirely fit, and must have left Eric with a bit of a bad taste in his mouth. Rodney was clearly his bet for the future and the seeming inability to marry short-term success with a long-term gain must have given him a few headaches.


Meanwhile over on the looshead side, Galway native and all round strongman Ronan Loughney had started the season in good form, only making way in the number one jersey for the returning Brett Wilkinson, and Eric must have taken great solace from this source of solidity in the team. Loughney started the first three games of the season at LH, two of which Connacht won, and was part of a Connacht team which made a very positive start to the season, winning away at Treviso and at home to the Dragons and the Scarlets.

Rodney Ah You on the near (Tighthead) side alongside Adrian Flavin and Ronan Loughney at home to the Scarlets back in September. Rodney played all of this game, and we won too!

However the cracks were starting to appear for us by then and, alongside poor place kicking, the scrum was being shown up as the weakness everyone had feared it would be! By the time the first two rounds of the Heineken Cup rolled around things had taken a serious turn for the worst. Connacht had lost four games in a row and, although it would be easy to point out how this little matter snowballed against us, it is useful to note that three of these games were away at Swansea, Dublin and Belfast. That's a heck of a journey, one which did nothing to bolster Connacht confidence. The boys were never going to need a lift for the special occasion at the Stoop in November which marked our HCup debut, nor for the gutsy [can't believe I just used that phrase in reference to Connacht!] home display against the uber-prepared Dusatoir and co., both admiral performances in their own right.


Let's not get off track though. The scrum is at the heart of a team, and that importance seems to have become magnified in the last couple of seasons, both by the continuing dearth of top quality tightheads here in Ireland and also by the natural cyclical nature of the sport, placing renewed emphasis on certain facets of the game with each coming season. Everybody knew that Connacht were weak at this heart and justifiably attacked us there. The departure of Jamie Hagan had left us very ill prepared for top level scrummaging with journeyman Dylan Rogers and Leinster behemoth Stewart Maguire somewhat off the pace when introduced and Rodney now struggling with some injuries, Elwood needed to pull off a miracle, or at the least a bit of nifty selection magic. 

Ronan 'Rolocks' Loughney: Galway native, Irish speaker, bog-oak sculptor, degree in business. Oh yeah, and he's a pretty handy prop too, no biggy...

Who knows exactly how the decision was made but Ronan Loughney started on the right side of the scrum at home to Treviso in what would be a narrow loss. He had a torrid time of it the next week at home to Glaws in the HCup, coming off after a single minute of the second half for Rodney. I remember saying to a chap beside me in the ground that at least we now had a tighthead on the pitch, a comment which was as much tongue-in-cheek about Rodneys technical deficiencies as it was about the potential folly of picking players out of position. I was once again present and correct in Limerick on Stephens day, having my first trip to Thomond marred by a sloppy Connacht performance but I remember thinking that the game would stand to him.


Amazingly, by the time the Quins game rolled around, Rolocks was already included in the Wolfhounds squad, despite the fact that he had been out injured for a couple of weeks and had played only five matches at tighthead, not to mention the fact that this was just after the infamous fourteenth straight defeat for the boys in green. This may say more about the hunt for the rare 'ambipropsterous' breed [thank you Connacht Clan forum!] as much as anything else. In any case, the big man was welcomed back into the fold and put in a savage 77 minute performance, besting the much touted Joe 'Haircut' Marler on the Quins side. It was a watershed moment for Connacht's season and one which the lads richly deserved.


Eric Elwood deserves a lot of credit for this in my opinion, or at the least, Dan McFarland does. As I said, it was clear that the heart of the team wasn't functioning and Eric turned to the big Connachtman as a source of heart and fortitude, as well being an able technician and an intelligent footballer. We have heard so much in the last year or so about the best props being the ones with determination and canniness to hang in there and to readjust and keep competing, a la Mike Ross, and I believe this move had that kind of thinking stamped all over it!

A Connacht front row of Denis Buckley, Ethienne Reynecke and Ronan Loughney fights for all their worth in the Sportsground endgame against Quins. Galway will never forget!

Crucially for EE and Co., he wasn't let down down by the deputies either. Denis Buckley is an academy player who suddenly found himself promoted to the number 17 jersey in light of Rolocks conversion and ably backed up Wilko off the bench. The young fella is a decent prospect and didn't take too many games to get up to the speed of top level rugby, a very good omen indeed! He's a small nuggety prop, but shows good body-position around the field and looks a tidy scrummager. EE's ability to spring an energetic young player alongside the frantic skulduggery of Saffa hooker and all-round character Ethienne 'Mullet' Reynecke gave Connacht an endgame bite that paid dividends in our season resurrection. Whew!


All said and done then it was a masterful move and one which saw Loughney firmly entrenched in the NO. 3 jersey for the rest of the season, where Connacht went on to summon, seemingly from nowhere, a best ever league finish of 8th! [More of which anon...] But where do we stand for next season in the propping department? It's worth a quick look...


With the apparent departure of both Dylan Rogers and Stewart Maguire there's a fresh look to the props department and with the arrival of Nathan White from Leinster the roster looks something like:


Loosehead:              Brett Wilkinson, Denis Buckley
Tighthead:               Nathan White, Rodney Ah You, Finlay Bealham
Ambipropsterous:   Ronan Loughney


With the Connacht 'Eagles' about to compete in  the British and Irish Cup for the first time next season you would imagine that this is nowhere near enough props and, indeed, EE has stated that we were short at Hooker, Prop and Centre for next season. With the recent capture of Jason Harris-Wright from Bristol, and the promotion of Brian Murphy from Galwegians to fill a void at Centre, it would seem that Connacht are perhaps one prop away from being better prepared than they've ever been up front!


Some speculation has been made of a Jamie Hagan move back to Connacht, but with the big man having another year on his contract at Leinster, and the blues not exactly being weighed down with props, I imagine this is all just talk. The speculation regarding the now out-of-work Royce Burke-Flynn is another thing altogether and he may be departing Doncaster for one of several Irish destinations, we'll just have to wait and see.

Big lads! Wilko, Flavin and Rolocks.