Connacht’s long march back from Siberia continues

Connacht's nightmare return from Siberia continued today with the team now stranded in Moscow airport without knowing when they will arrive home in Ireland.

Having been forced to stay two extra nights in Krasnoyarsk after their victory over Enisei STM when their charter flight developed a technical problem, the squad suffered yet more travel headaches yesterday trying to get out of Russia.

‘I haven’t ever really encountered anything like this,” said Connacht coach Pat Lam.” We have had flights delayed and things like that, but here we have had to deal with visas, delays, changing hotels, all in one go. Sometimes one or two of those things can happen, but not all together, and not so far from home.”

However, it was hoped one group travelling via London may arrive in the UK in time catch a connecting flight to Ireland later tonight, but a second group was forced to remain in Amsterdam overnight and is due to arrive home on Tuesday.

A third group never left Moscow as a result of their temporary visas not being issued in time to travel, and was hoping to get on a flight out tomorrow morning.

The return from Krasnoyarsk - where Connacht opened their European Challenge Cup - has been beset by delays, exacerbated by the shutdown of airspace over Europe and the expiration of their visas on Sunday. As a result the Russian authorities have had to issue new visas in Moscow airport to allow travel out of the country, but, even with the help of a member of the Irish embassy in Moscow, these have taken several hours to process, leaving nine members of the party stranded in the Russian capital.

Lam says it has been frustrating and a taken the gloss off what had been a very good trip, having overcome the Russian side by 31-14 in arctic conditions.

“We should have been home on Saturday night, “ says Lam, “but we ended up having to check all the way in for the flight, then check out and go to another hotel, in -30 degrees. Then we had to get up early, hopefully expecting to go home, but instead we ended up going to another hotel.

“Probably the worst news was having to split the team into three. We didn’t want to do that, but there was no guarantee the plane was going to be ready ‘til maybe the end of the week. The priority was to get the players home first with the coaches and some key management so we had organised three different flights.”

Having left the hotel at 4am on Monday morning (9pm Sunday Irish time) for the first flight, Lam and four players were then bumped off the flight, and forced to wait in Krasnoyarsk for eight hours with the second party of travellers.

“It’s just been a real challenge, I said it was going to be a mental test, and it has been like a game,” added Lam. “Things change during the game, and you just have to adapt. I am pretty proud of the management and players - everybody is just getting on with it. It’s been one challenge after another and one day we look back at it and say it made us tougher.

“You try to plan for everything, again with the chartered plane, you have a lot of faith in it, and it was a great journey over. The plane and the crew stayed, and it was all set to go, but part of its computer caused all this havoc. I suppose we had no other choice to get back.

“They are the challenges in life, and we have had a fair few over the last few days, We haven’t slept for over 30 hours. We did our review the other night at midnight trying to get back into Irish time, and we will now need to do draft four of this week’s schedule.

“We are getting closer to home. It would be wonderful to get home and get our minds around a shortened preparation for Brive,” Lam added.

The return has been a headache, particularly preparing for Saturday’s fixture against Brive.

“The original plan was to be on the field on Monday, a light run for the guys who were over here and then the light day was changed to Tuesday, but now it looks like that the light day might be Wednesday.

“We will probably just have a light indoor session, just do a bit of clarity stuff and just make sure the boys can stay awake because that is the other thing they are going to have to deal with. We will probably have one run on Thursday, a captain’s run and then into it. But that’s if we get home on Tuesday.”