Discipline concerns Friend despite Bordeaux success
THERE was no bonus point in victory for Connacht but coach Andy Friend called on his players to take their chance to shine and insisted it’s up to them to impress when they break into the team.
Kyle Godwin certainly shone with two tries and a man-of-the-match performance, but a controlled yet stuttering showing from the home side meant they needed a late Finlay Bealham score to wrap up the win.
Pool 3 in the Challenge Cup was launched on Friday night in the south of France as Sale Sharks put 41 points on Perpignan, who lined out without Paddy Jackson. Friend’s side are already on the hind foot and the coach wants a better all-round showing in Manchester next Saturday.
“Yeah, I saw that Sale score. You do want five points at home if you can, but the other important thing is to deny the opposition points, which we did,” said Friend.
Conditions
“Wet conditions there today, but we still had moments and opportunities to get five points, so yeah, we are disappointed, but we’ll take the four and get ready for Sale next week.
“We can’t be saying because we don’t have the perceived front-liners out there that we are not in with a good shout of winning those games. It’s for the other blokes who come in to make sure they take a step up.
“We shouldn’t regress or stay stagnant. That’s the competition we want within the squad and if players get their opportunity I want them to take it.”
Even when Bordeaux-Bègles closed to within seven points of Connacht there was no fear that the Sportsground faithful would leave disappointed, but afterwards Friend called out his players for their lack of discipline, while he felt their game management and enthusiasm to attack deserted them at times.
The sin-binning of Robin Copeland after 52 minutes resulted in the back-row remaining on the bench after his 10-minute punishment and Friend called for ‘red’ penalties to be immediately axed from their game.
“When Robin got the yellow card, it was an area where we had been saying that discipline was very important, we can’t be giving those away,” said Friend.
“For me, it was ‘can we survive without Robin there at No 8? ‘Yup, we can,’ because Colby (Fainga’a) has played 8, we know JB (Jarrad Butler) has played 8. We can mix and match those fellas so we made that call.
“We went through every penalty last week and we said to the players: ‘is it a red penalty? – which is you’ve given the referee no choice’. ‘Is it an orange penalty? – that’s good play by the opposition’. ‘Is it a green penalty? – the referee’s made an error’.
“We had far too many red penalties in our 15 that we gave away against Ulster. We’ll go through that game as well, but I know straight up there is five red penalties, and five is too many. We have got to be squeaky clean to get that right.”
Instead of trying to push on for a bonus-point win in the second half, Connacht had to firefight as a reinvigorated opponent briefly dreamed of a second away win in 12 months.
On the back of Copeland’s yellow Bordeaux crashed over for their try thanks to the barrelling replacement Afa Amosa, and they could have pulled even closer but for some poor handling near the tryline.
Even after Bealham wrapped