Edinburgh 5

Connacht 26

CONNACHT BOOKED A place in the URC knockout stages when they made the most of what they created to make it eight wins from their last nine league games to advance to the quarter-finals.

Having won only two of their opening nine games, Stuart Lancaster’s men turned their season around with a massive surge and with Ulster losing to Glasgow Warriors, they are now in the quarter-finals.

Tonight’s results saw Connacht jump from ninth in the table to sixth, with Munster now one place outside the play-off positions. Clayton McMillan’s side host the Lions (seventh) in Limerick on Saturday evening.

The URC table following Friday's games.

The massive improvement in Connacht’s defence since January has been the main reason for their surge and it was to the fore in the opening quarter in this one when they kept their line intact despite Edinburgh having 75% possession.

Locks Josh Murphy and Joe Joyce led the way in holding the Scots at bay, with Edinburgh showing plenty of ambition despite being well out of contention for qualification, constantly going to the corners rather than the posts from a string of penalties.

But as they butchered chance after chance it was easy to see why Edinburgh’s campaign was over from a long way out, even if they came into this one on the back of three wins in succession.

Connacht, with skipper Cian Prendergast outstanding, saturated the pressure and then struck after 24 minutes with Sean Jansen breaking from deep inside his own 22 from a scrum, with Shayne Bolton carrying forward for Harry West to send Josh Ioane away and he did superbly to skip a couple of tackles and score in the right corner.

Edinburgh got on top again but couldn’t find a way through and Connacht countered again from, working it through multiple hands before a series of surges finished with Shamus Hurley-Langton diving through to score under the posts. Sam Gilbert converted to make it 12-0 four minutes from the break.

Connacht’s Shamus Hurley-Langton scores a try. Craig Watson / INPHO Craig Watson / INPHO / INPHO

And they pushed on from there, piling on the pressure from a tapped penalty before Hurley-Langton squeezed over, with Gilbert converting to make it 19-0 at the break.

Connacht, who lost impressive centre Harry West to a hamstring injury in the opening half, again had to saturate after the restart and didn’t get into the Edinburgh half until the start of the final quarter.

But they again made it count with replacement scrum-half Matthew Devine — who is heading to Ulster next season — hacking from inside his own half with the ball bouncing up kindly for him to run from deep to score under the posts to secure the bonus point.

Duhan van der Merwe set up hooker Ewan Ashman for his ninth try of the season as Edinburgh finally found a way through eight minutes from time.

Edinburgh scorers:

Try – E Ashman

Connacht scorers:

Tries – S Hurley-Langton [2], J Ioane, M Devine

Conversions – S Gilbert [3/4]

EDINBURGH: Harry Paterson; Darcy Graham, Piers O’Conor (Jack Brown 77), Findlay Thomson, Duhan van der Merwe; Ross Thompson, Hector Patterson (Charlie Shiel 65); Pierre Schoeman (Boan Venter 53), Ewan Ashman (Jerry Blyth-Lafferty 74), Ollie Blyth-Lafferty (Paul Hill 53); Marshall Sykes, Glen Young (Callum Hunter-Hill 57); Tom Dodd (Tom Currie 53), Freddy Douglas (Euan McVie 67), Magnus Bradbury (c).

CONNACHT: Sam Gilbert; Shane Jennings, Harry West (Sean Naughton 27), Bundee Aki, Shayne Bolton (Jack Carty 65); Josh Ioane, Ben Murphy (Matthew Devine 58); Billy Bohan (Peter Dooley 50), Eoin de Buitlear (Mikey Yarr 68), Finlay Bealham (Sam Illo 50); Joe Joyce, Josh Murphy (David O’Connor 54); Cian Prendergast (c), Shamus Hurley-Langton, Sean Jansen (Paul Boyle 54).