Was Michael Bradley right?

bradley last year incharge, we went to the semi final of the amlin and only lost 3 home league games at home.
Our record that year is 9 wins, 1 draw, 4 lost. (munster, ospreys, ulster, toulon)
we went from 25 september to 18 april, nearly 7 MONTHS without a home loss!

i remember that season very well cause there was alot of buzz around the place cause most weekends we expected a win at home, crowds got bigger that year too.

Bradley had his faults, awful away loses in the league, but with only a handful of supporters at them games, the people spending the money at home games left happy!

So many on here have said we can field 2 strong teams this season, were nearly covered everywhere apart from 9, 10 and hooker!

My point is to play our best players at home, and rest them for away games.
bring back targeting games, they'd be: all home games, edinburgh away, cardiff away, zebre away and treviso away

we'd have a healthier squad, more players getting game time and more chance of picking up points!


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this game management can be seen clearly in france, every single weekend.
so far 4 rounds are played!

round 1
5 home wins
1 draw
1 away win (clermont bet biarritz)

round 2
6 home wins
1 away win (stade francais bet perpigan)

round 3
7 home wins

round 4
6 home wins
1 away win (montpellier bet bordeux)


overall:
28 games
24 home wins
1 draw
3 away wins

some of these results include:
Oyonnax 30 - 19 Clermont Auvergne
Bordeaux-Begles 21 - 20 Castres
Grenoble 28 - 26 Toulon
Oyonnax 24 - 22 Biarritz

Interesting point swifty

I agree completely swifty. I've suggested tar getting home wins here in the past. It will be interesting to see if you get a similar response.

Agree 100% with tomsauce2000.

Welcome to the board by the way!

not sure about this, to me it seemed like we had to put too much effort into winning our homes games and that we had nothing left in the tank for the away games. Elwood's mantra was consistency and in a league format you cannot afford to be throwing games away like we did during Bradleys term and expect to improve the teams position in the league. Also there's no reason why we cannot pick up points away from home especially durng the November friendlies and six nations.

I think key players should be rested away from home. Players like Dan, Marion, Carr, Robbie etc who are key players attack wise can be rotated when on road and games where they have greater chance of influencing cherry picked to attempt to maximise our return. Same can be said for jhw, white, Clarke or faloon.

That doesn't mean that players coming in on any weekend get a free pass on performance. The standard of effort and professionalism has to be maintained by all the squad. The so called A team have being guilty of failing to maintain those standards too often IMO on the road over the last couple of seasons IMO. What's diff between 30 or 60 pt loss attitude and commitment wise?

Its old news now but I couldn't disagree more also. I will never forget the humiliation I felt as a Connacht supporter most weeks at the time.

First of all the season that the main targeting of games was done was the season before Bradley's last season. We got a few good home wins (Munster and Leinster) but we also didn't win the targeted games anyway. I remember games we threw away against Scarlets, Cardiff and Ulster especially. I think we finished something like 13 points adrift at the bottom. I think we went something like 3 years without even picking up a bonus point away from home. We progressed to the quarter final of the Challenge Cup (when it was much easier to do so) by beating two very poor sides (Dax A and Rovigo) home and away. I think Corinthians would have come out of that group.

45-3 against Scarlets, 58-0 against Cardiff (46-0 at half time), 75-5 against London Irish, about 53-13 or something similar at Ravenhill. Absolutely laughable stuff and did untold damage to Connacht's image as well as squad morale I'd imagine as well as ruining the confidence of the squad players by sending them as lambs to the slaughter most weeks.

The only untargeted games I remember in Bradley's final season was away to Scarlets near the end of the season which was fair enough as we had 3 games in a week and the Challenge Cup S/F the following weekend and Munster away at Christmas which ended up going to waste as the Leinster game was frozen off a few days later.

Our squad has more depth now and we can make a few changes and still put out a decent squad. We must rotate at times but I want to see no return to the lambs to the slaughter policy adopted by Bradley.

Best topic ever.

Gut feeling: Jesus no, 10 tries against Scarlets?

Reality check: If we'd beaten Toulon, only a mediocre Cardiff side (who were getting spanked in the final until Jonny W got injured) stood between silverware and Connacht/Bradley qualifying for the HEC off our own bat.

Back to you with some numbers in a bit....

Borders no.2 wrote: Our squad has more depth now and we can make a few changes and still put out a decent squad. We must rotate at times but I want to see no return to the lambs to the slaughter policy adopted by Bradley.

1 Wilko and Buckley
2 JHW and Henry
3 White and Loughney
4 Clarke and Swift
5 Muldowney and Kearney
6 Browne and Muldoon
7 Faloon and Heenan
8 Mckeon and Naoupu
9 Marmion and F.Murphy/Walsh
10 Parks and Ronaldson
11 Carr and Heally
12 Mc Sharry and Tonetti
13 Griff and So'Oialo
14 Poolman and TOH
15 Henshaw and Duffy

keep the players on the left for all home games, edinburgh away, cardiff away, zebre away and treviso away.

players on the right for away games, leinster, munster, ulster, glasgow, scarlets, ospreys, dragons.

players on the right could hold there own against them teams, but or best team would not win, rest our star players. if players improve then move them into the first team.

my bench for the home games would be players from the 'right' team.

to me, losing by 20 points and having no injurys/fresher players is better then losing by 8 points and key players taking knocks and getting tired for upcoming 'winnable' games.

I believe that you should always pick a team to win every match. Playing to win is what it is all about, it would even put pressure on the games that you are supposedly targeting!

If you ever accept that losing is ok you should give up. With bonus points abound in rugby now there is so much to play for. Would resting certain players make that much difference? It's not as if we have loads away on international duties? How would young lads feel if they were played in the games were we supposedly had no chance? Lambs to the slaughter would not be good for progress of lesser players.

There is something to learn in every game, every training session, this game is all about giving 100% all the time, rotate players by all means, promote lads from the Eagles if they do well, they'll be trying to break into the first team. Never do anything but your best.

Very few are advocating we should be settling for sixty points defeats.

If your best players are fully fit and available, pick them every time. However, if a player needed to be rested and is really only going to be 100% fit for two of the next three matches then, yeah, be selective. Target the games we think we've the best chance of winning.

I remember going to Edinburgh for an away match in 2008 I think.
It was an embarrassment. There was a pretty large Connacht crowd at it (maybe 100 - all in the same place) and we got nothing to cheer at all.
Put me off going to away games for quite a while

100% disagree with this. It is tough being a Connacht supporter at the best of time, especially when based outside the province. We were a laughing stock back then. It did nothing for the province at all.

If we put out a second team for away games, who are losing badly each week, how are we expected to:

1) Sign any player as a squad player
2) Expect these player whos confidence would be at the very bottom to fill in for injured players during home games?

I think it would bring a bad atmosphere to the squad if half of the squad had no confidence as they are going away and losing each week!