Much to his enormous delight, Connacht’s departing head coach Andy Friend has at least another week left in his productive five-year tenure after his side’s deserved 15-10 quarter-final win against Ulster in the Kingspan Stadium on Friday night earned them a URC semi-final in South Africa next week.
“I’m immensely proud and I’ll keep reverberating that because we are immensely proud,” said Friend after the stunning win in Belfast.
Connacht will be away to the Stormers in next weekend’s semi-finals in Cape Town after the defending champions proved too strong for the Bulls on Saturday afternoon.
Friend paid tribute to forwards coach Dewald Senekal – who is also moving on to take up the same role at Oyonnax in France – for the successful manner his side targeted Ulster’s breakdown, especially in wide areas.
Connacht won 10 turnovers and the 18-11 penalty count in their favour was in large part due to their work over the ball in defence. Connacht forced a host of penalties and turnovers in the jackal, with Shamus Hayley-Langton, Dave Heffernan, Conor Oliver, Denis Buckley, Bundee Aki, Mack Hansen and others all helping to stymie Ulster for much of an error-prone yet compellingly eventful knock-out interpro.
In truth, Connacht could have won more convincingly but left serval try-scoring chances slip before Ulster bought the score to 10-12 entering the final quarter through the game’s only try by Alan O’Connor. Ultimately, they were indebted to a brilliant break by the Bristol-bound Kieran Marmion in his 11th and final season with Connacht in the build-up to Jack Carty’s fifth penalty.
“We normally are a team that has to get everything right to win but tonight we showed that we don’t,” said Friend. “We weren’t the team that got everything right tonight but we still won. That shows enormous growth as a footy side and it’s an enormous compliment to everybody, players and coaches.
“The belief is now there. I thought we were good tonight but I reckon we can be so much better. That’s the exciting thing. We get another chance to show it next weekend and I don’t care where we go, to be honest with you.”
After signing off with Connacht, Friend intends taking his beloved camper to the Continent in the summer and finishing his time in Europe by taking in the World Cup in France with his wife Kerri before heading back to Australia.
“It’ll get a fair workout come June but I’m really stoked to not have to be jumping in that early,” he admitted with a contented smile.
Carty echoed Friend’s take on the match when admitting: “We were massively, massively wasteful and I think that’s what the excitement part is. That’s where the growth is.
“If we take those opportunities next week, we will be closer to a final. I don’t think many people gave us a chance but we were confident coming up.”
Reflecting on this famous win, Carty said: “I think the difference was our ability to keep them away from our 22. Obviously they play for penalties in terms of looking to get access into your 22 and look for mauls.
“I think we took that away from them with our kick choice and how we manipulated our back three; we kept them away from our half. Our breakdown in terms of targeting their wide breakdown was phenomenal. They were the things we said we were going to do, and we got the result for it.”
For Ulster, another season ended on a hugely disappointing and anticlimactic night, almost a year on from losing a semi-final away to the Stormers in the 85th minute when a win would have set up a final in Belfast against the Bulls.
Having finished second in the URC table, Ulster were warm favourites to beat Connacht for a third time this season and set up a home semi-final next weekend against the Stormers or Bulls.
“We entered the playoffs in a really good position and were very hopeful but in the full knowledge that tonight was going to be a massive challenge,” said head coach Dan McFarland.
“To come out on the wrong side of a really tense affair is gutting. We’ve got a lot of people downstairs who put in a huge amount of effort and the bottom line is we were second best and I thought Connacht were excellent.
“I want to pay tribute to Andy Friend and the work that he’s done at Connacht, Pete Wilkins has done a great job as well and the players played really well tonight.
“They disrupted us at the breakdown and that was the difference in the game really, their defensive breakdown versus our ability to hold on to the ball.
“That’s really disappointing but it’s playoff rugby, they’re often very tense, especially the interpro games and we were on the wrong side of it.
The Ulster head coach was not of a mind to suggest his side had progressed or regressed this season.
“I think that’s for another day. I’d like to think that finishing second on the log would speak to a level of progress but losing in a quarter-final when we lost in a semi-final last year would say something different. They’re one-off games and can be tight affairs. Myself and everyone in the organisation will look to where we can improve next year.”
