CONNACHT GOT TO December unbeaten at the Sportsground throughout 2023 but a late collapse against Leinster and then a drubbing by Bordeaux-Bégles ruined that run, so flanker Cian Prendergast was thrilled that they began the new year with a win in Galway.
That 22-9 victory over Munster on Monday now gives them a boost as they try to rescue their Champions Cup hopes away to Lyon and home to Pat Lam’s Bristol Bears. Prendergast believes they have turned a corner.
“We just have to build on that into the new year, and hopefully, we’ll start picking up results,” said Prendergast, who will be 24 next month.
“We’d have loved to win the Leinster game but the learnings that came out of it were huge. We’re a relatively young team with a new coaching ticket. It’s a long season and we’re well aware that some results we’d like to have gone our way didn’t go our way, but we’re in a stronger position than we were last year.
“We expect to win every game. I think we were a little bit more relieved, so that’s probably why you saw that outburst of emotion. We’re well aware it’s been tough, we’ve been on the shit side of a couple of results. It was more relief than anything and hopefully we can springboard and get momentum.”
Prendergast, who has now chalked up 57 appearances since joining the Connacht academy in the summer of 2020, said they concentrated on the Munster match and will now turn their focus to Europe.
“We haven’t thought about Lyon really, we have two weeks lead-in now,” he said. “Ultimately, we’ll take it day by day and game by game and see where we are. We’ll go from there.
“European rugby is the most exciting tournament, we probably haven’t done ourselves justice so it’s an exciting opportunity to go to France and pick up a result and keep building.”
The Kildare native said that they did not panic when slipping to a five-match losing run across the URC and Europe and that welcome guidance came from the coaching team headed up by Pete Wilkins.
“The coaching staff, they really took the emotion out of it. They said, ‘This is what we have to work on but also this is an opportunity to grow’. We can get better at this because ultimately we’re not the finished article.
“We had three good results at the start of the season but weren’t the finished article. It allowed us to be a little bit more cold and precise going into the game against Munster.”
