KIERAN KEANE’S ABSENCE from Monday’s Champions Cup and Challenge Cup launches in Dublin left John Muldoon and Nigel Carolan to front up about Connacht’s disappointingly slow start to the season.
The Kiwi head coach, who also sidestepped the Pro14 launch a few weeks ago, was conspicuous by his absence as he again dodged the media, instead pushing his assistant Carolan to fulfill the pre-tournament obligations.
Even Steve Tandy, the Ospreys head coach, made it to the capital despite his side’s journey home from South Africa following their defeat to the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein on Friday night.
On the evidence of Keane’s tetchy post-match dealings with Sky Sports and then the print media in his press conference following his side’s loss to Cardiff a fortnight ago, perhaps Carolan’s presence was something of a blessing in disguise. The former Ireland U20s coach always speaks articulately and intelligently and was able, alongside Muldoon, to explain, in their opinion, why Connacht have lost four of their opening five outings under Keane, three of which have been by fine margins.
“Change is always going to be a bit unsettling,” Carolan, who left his post as U20s head coach to take up a role on Keane’s new senior coaching ticket, began.
One of the big attractions for Carolan, he continued, was the 64-year-old’s player-led, outcome-based methods. It’s the same approach he had so much success at underage level with.
“For the players it’s a steep learning and unfortunately the early results just haven’t gone our way, albeit we were close in a few. It’s building, it’s building nicely and how close we got to Scarlets shows it’s on an upward curve.”
The steep learning curve has included reversals to Glasgow, Dragons, Cardiff Blues and, most recently, the defending champions Scarlets. The sole win came against the Kings in Galway but, encouragingly, the performances have steadily improved week-on-week.
“It takes a while to get used to things and it takes a while to talk to some of the players,” Muldoon says. “It takes time to gel and get new ideas across but you don’t want too many results to go against you. We need to kick on now and get a few results on the board as that will help the confidence levels.
“It’s still quite positive [in the dressing room]. We’re still getting used to him and the way he wants things but you can’t be giving away too many results too early. We need to get consistent performances but we haven’t really achieved that as of yet.”
Muldoon, the Connacht captain, suggested some players have struggled to take the new information, strategies and tactics on board, thus leading to a slow adaptation rate and an inaccurate, disjointed and stuttering start to the Keane reign.
“I would consider myself an intelligent rugby player,” the 34-year-old says. “You’ve been around a while and you do a small little bit of coaching. I had a down week last week and I assisted with the coaching of the academy and it takes a while when you’re a kid to pick stuff up but when you’re a little bit older I can pick things up pretty quickly.
“That comes with age and experience. You’ve to go out and live it for a while and we’ve got quite a young team and it takes longer to adapt. We have a young age profile and that’s probably why we’re taking longer to adapt. When you go out onto the pitch you don’t go out to make mistakes but when you become tired and under pressure, you sometimes revert to type.
“We’re changing our type at the moment and it takes a while to embed that in your DNA and like it took time for us not to kick the ball a couple of years ago under Pat. It takes time to come around to the new stuff and some players are struggling a little bit.
“If I was trying to learn algebra again having been away from school for a few years it would take me a while to pick it back up so some players it takes a little bit longer and that’s life. It’s a matter of upskilling as quickly as possible. Everyone is buying into it, it’s just a matter of getting that results-based performance out on the pitch.
“You just need to see improvement every game. I think the most frustrating thing from a coaches and players’ point of view is going out and making the same mistakes every day but five games, we’ve lost four of them and each day we’ve gone out we’ve done different things wrong.”
Defensive errors have proved costly, particularly in that home loss to Cardiff when Keane was left fuming afterwards. His side threw away the points in the final 10 minutes.
“We are a club in transition and we have struggled to put a stamp on our season thus far but we had a cracking game against Scarlets. It is an opportunity to advance for us,” Carolan added. “We want to re-ignite that form of 18 months ago.”
Following that sensational Pro12 triumph under Pat Lam, Muldoon muses that a failure to kick on from that and better themselves last season led to this downward spiral in form.
He takes over: “I sat here this time last year and said for us to go out and be competitive we’d need to go and get better and change things. Ultimately our consistency and a lot of analysis by other teams figured out what we did but it was up to us to change that. If we do the same thing again, we won’t be good enough as you always have to get better.
“What was good enough six months, isn’t good enough now so you need to add more to your game and change and develop quickly. 18 months ago we won a competition playing the best style of rugby but that won’t win you a competition this year. It changes very quickly, you’ve to go out and push the boundaries to get even better.
“We found a niche in the market for a year but that won’t win you a competition now. You’ve got to try things and ultimately make mistakes and mistakes are very frustrating but until you try you’ll never succeed. It’s like a golfer changing his swing, why would Pádraig Harrington change his swing when he’s won x amount of competitions? Because he knows he’s not going to be good enough in two or three years time.
“We haven’t gone away from that DNA and culture that won us the Pro12. We are still the highest passing team, still the most amounts of minutes of ball in play. Unfortunately we are not making our tackles and it is costing us badly but we are still asking the questions of other teams to tackle us. We are still playing an attacking brand of rugby, just a little differently.”
It’s on to Ulster and Kingspan Stadium on Friday, a ground Connacht have failed to win at since 1960. No better time to reverse the early-season fortunes and ignite their campaign.
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