CONNACHT HEAD COACH Pat Lam revealed some of the desperate measures being taken by his squad to help the province cope through their current injury crisis.
The defending champions, who work off a lighter base of resources than their three neighbours, were without 22 players going in to the New Year’s Eve loss to Munster. And Lam will arrive in the Sportsground today expecting a few more men added to the absentee list.
A thigh injury threatened to keep captain John Muldoon out of Saturday’s inter-pro, but Lam says the captain and his protégé Sean O’Brien both struggled through the week before making themselves available for matchday and the visit of Munster.
“Sean O’Brien got injured on Tuesday and was a big doubt from then, so he wasn’t able to train for the rest of the week,” said Lam.
“John Muldoon was injured all week and didn’t train, so Eoin McKeon trained on Tuesday, then him and James Connolly both went down with vomiting bugs on Wednesday, so they’re both gone.
“It was just (Saturday) morning that we had to check who was going to be fit and available. They did a test on Mul and he was confident that he could get through it, so Mul played without training. Then Sean O’Brien went on the bench, after getting injured in training on Tuesday.”
While the willingness of players to play through the pain barrier is commendable, the situation is obviously far from ideal. Lam’s ethos at Connacht has been based on fluid movement and familiarity with the system. As he delves further down the depth chart, that becomes increasingly difficult with players unable to forge habits in training.
“I’ve always said that what we do on the weekend is on the back of the quality of the training we do during the week,” the Samoan said on Saturday evening.
“The real difficulty at the moment is that we can’t get the quality of training that we need to.”
You can’t do anything about it. Of course it’s frustrating, but you can’t do anything about it. You also run the risk of training with injuries.”
Despite all their problems, Connacht still created try-scoring opportunities in a 9 – 16 loss to the league’s in-form team.
“You just have to swallow it and accept that a team that is very hungry at the moment, very committed, we needed to be accurate to beat them. Unfortunately, there were too many opportunities that we had that we didn’t take.”
Given that it’s the time of year when we’re supposed to look forward and use a clean slate as a source of optimism for new beginnings, Lam was asked if he could see any positives as he moves into the final six months of his time in Connacht.
“The good news is it’s a new year. We will wake up.
“I always say to the boys whether we lose or win, take the things we did well and learn from the things we can do better. Move into the next game and nothing changes. It’s another game where we got one point, we need to go to a very tough place to play a form team and try to get some points.
“The good news otherwise we have a strong representation going to national camp and that is part of our legacy and it is a good thing to see.”
Lam added: “I’ve been in games, certainly during my first year, where we just crumbled and it shows how far we have come that we come up against a top of the table team and we are gutted that we didn’t win this game.
“The boys will keep going, but little things have cost us again. It was a good 2016 but hopefully 2017 will see a few things turn around for us.”
- Additional reporting by Murray Kinsella
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