O’Halloran: I copped myself on after missing Toulouse coup
Ahead of Euro rematch, Connacht full-back admits landmark victory over French aristocrats forced him to reassess his career
IT was the unforgettable day out west when the artisans trumped the aristocrats.
Three years ago, Connacht stunned the European game by turning over multiple champions Toulouse in their own backyard.
David smote Goliath that December but few of us expected much to follow in the aftermath of such a stunning coup from Pat Lam’s side.
The westerners had only qualified by dint of 2012 champions Leinster’s final win and their season would subsequently, as it had done perennially, culminate in a whimper. But the seeds had been sown. Tiernan O’Halloran watched the drama unfold alongside Ronan Loughney in Dublin. As his provincial friends were making history, he was lining out for Buccaneers in the AIL.
INFUSED
The day infused him with immense pride but the next morning he also realised it had passed him by.
“I wasn’t involved but there was still much excitement,” recalls the 25-yearold of the famous 16-14 win which inflicted the first home defeat in five years of European competition upon the then Guy Noves-coached superstars.
“I wasn’t in Pat’s selection at the time. But I was watching it of course, it was incredible. Whether you’re a rugby fan or whatever, it was great to see a team that would have been one of the top teams in Europe at the time with such a proud record at home getting turned over.
“We were struggling, near enough the bottom of the Pro12 at the time, and we’d struggled in European competition. So go over and pull off a win like that you could just see the excitement and the buzz.
“That would have been a turning point in Pat’s time here, everyone got a belief in what we were doing and the way he wanted us to play. It just built from there. Thankfully, it’s all come to fruition.”
If it was a turning point for the Connacht collective, it was also the fillip the Clifden native desperately required. Or, as he agrees succinctly, a kick in the ass.
“It was,” he says. “It was a tough enough time in terms of my career. I was struggling big time in form and had one or two small injuries – nothing that should’ve been affecting me too much – but it was.
“It was all on Pat then. Pat was always pushing me to keep on improving and working hard and thankfully I copped myself on, worked hard and got back into the squad again.”
Connacht were chastened a week later, Toulouse avenging their shock defeat with both bludgeon and rapier, a 37-9 spanking returning the world, it seemed, to it correct axis.
But the seeds had being sown west of the Shannon; and the penny was dropping with the then exiled full-back, then being kept out of the side by a certain Robbie Henshaw at full-back.
For O’Halloran had been a Connacht player the previous time Toulouse had visited the Sportsground, five years ago now, when the illustrious French visitors scored a clinical 36-10 victory.
“The first time against Toulouse I just remember being extremely nervous, the fireworks and everything,” he recalls of the occasion. “It was just such a big occasion. That first five, 10 minutes they just blew us off the park with their skill, physicality and intensity.
“Now, we’ve got the expectation that they’re going to come and play like that; we’ve played big games before and we know we can start better ourselves.
“You use things like that as experience, hopefully we can be a lot more relaxed and experience gets you better prepared for Saturday and that starts with a good training week.”
RELAXED
Connacht have certainly relaxed more as this season has progressed; from their appalling pre-season – or rather lack of it – Friday’s defining success against hitherto unbeaten Ulster witnessed more of the confident, headsup, skill-based side that conquered all around them in the Pro12 last season.
They always knew they had it in them. “There’s a lot of outside stuff being said, some people are saying, ‘Oh, they’re champions’, other people are saying, ‘They’re still the fourth province’.
“But we backed ourselves, backed the systems that we play. Obviously, our pre-season didn’t go the way we wanted either, so that was a small bit of a struggle for us to get things going quickly. But now I think it has and it’s a bigger stage, bigger and better teams and all the focus is on us really.
“That was a problem in the past. We’d focus too much on the big names coming and the star players, whereas if we stick to the game-plan in front of us that works for us, it’s worked for us last year and there’s no reason it won’t work for us again.”