Connacht a credit to Irish rugby as they bow out in blaze of glory

The thunderous roar which greeted the full-time whistle must have echoed to the top of the snow-kissed peaks of the Alps that overlook Grenoble’s new home. According to Bernard Jackman, Grenoble hadn’t seen a game like it all season in the Top 14.

As the home coach also noted, not many people in Grenoble or the greater French rugby fraternity would have been aware of what Connacht are about nowadays, but after this live screening on French terrestrial television, they will now.

Connacht’s performance scaled the heights of ambition.

A pity then the game wasn’t free-to-air back home, for this truly was the most entertaining 80-minute spectacle involving any Irish side this season. On a crisp, still night and on a snooker-like playing top, they ran the ball from everywhere against like-minded souls.

Interruption

Connacht scored three stunning tries to one to lead 19-16 at the break, which sometimes can stem the flow of a game. Here, half-time barely constituted an interruption, Connacht running back Jonathan Wisniewski’s kick-off from inside their own 22 and Bundee Aki offloading under-arm in a traffic jam of Grenoble players. Here we go again.

The gamble of playing Matt Healy at fullback for only the second time in his career was nothing short of a spectacular success. Although beaten in the air three times, his positional play was sound, but, more to the point, his running game was electric.

Twice he made incisions wide out with his acceleration and change of direction, leaving players trailing in his wake to twice deliver left-to-right try-scoring passes for Niyi Adeolokun. Connacht’s cutting edge simply shredded the Grenoble defence out wide.

Both originated from Kieron Marrion’s livewire running and passing game in tandem with Shane O’Leary, the second seeing the scrumhalf take James Connolly’s feed from the tail of the lineout to run laterally infield and work a superbly disguised loop around his outhalf and time the pass for Healy.

In between times Healy also counter-attacked brilliantly before Marmion and John Muldoon kept the move afloat, O’Leary then calmly crosskicking for Henshaw to touchdown.

For his own try, when Aki latched onto a misplaced pass by Grenoble’s otherwise excellent South African scrumhalf Charl McLeod, Fionn Carr stepped in as first receiver, drew his man and Healy – alert to the possibilities – steamed onto the ball to burn the 17-times capped Springbok fullback Gio Aplon to score untouched from 30 metres.

Connacht could have scored more, although so too could Grenoble. The home side had that bit of experience and savvy, notably at outhalf, more power in contact, and more go-forward off their lineout maul, which led to the critical sinbinning of Denis Buckley and the tries by Lucas Dupont and Mahamadou Diaby.

Mazy run

Hence, while Connacht led for an hour, from the 10th to the 70th minute, building up 16-point and 13-point leads, you never felt they were in the clear.

Then again, even when Wisniewski’s drop goal regained the lead for a second time for Grenoble, Connacht’s response was in keeping with their entire performance and for a brief fleeting moment it looked as if Carr was going to crown it off with a wonderful, mazy run to the line.

The Stade des Alpes must fairly rock when packed, but even at almost three-quarters full the decibel levels had risen so high by the end that it sounded as if the 14,877 attendance had tripled. Both sides were roundly applauded by both sets of supporters. It was that kind of night.

That Connacht have almost single-handedly salvaged the Irish season and been a joy to watch is a source of some pride.

"The big one is our support is just tremendous and we are feeding off each other," said Lam. "And it's not just the Connacht supporters. This week I had a lot of messages from Leinster, Ulster and Munster supporters. It's fantastic. We spoke about it before the game that Ireland was right behind us, and that's a really good feeling.

“It’s just a shame that we didn’t have the semi-final to come at home.”

Lam took a moment to highlight the performance of James Connolly. “He’s just going to get better. There are so many. Shane O’Leary, Sean O’Brien; they are all in position because of injury but they are all learning.”

Costly kicks

O’Leary, nominally a centre and sometime outhalf whose season with Grenoble led to Connacht acquiring him, landed four out of five and happily joined in the party, identifying his receivers intelligently. True, he put a couple of costly kicks out on the full, but his performance, and the performance of all the players, new and old, demonstrate how every member of their squad is buying into Lam’s ways.

“James Connolly came up to me afterwards and apologised that he didn’t shut the gate down for that try just before half-time,” revealed Lam. “I said, ‘Just learn from it. You don’t need to apologise, just take how you’re annoyed when we lost and use that when we win too. Always go to improve your game and if we get that right, we’ll be okay.’ Denis is apologising for the yellow card and I just said, ‘Go and learn from it.’ If we learn from it, it’s not a problem. It’s only an issue if we don’t learn from it.”