Connacht coach Michael Bradley has made two changes to his team for tomorrow’s Magners League clash with the Glasgow Warriors (Firhill, kick-off 7.30pm), bringing Keith Matthews and Ronan Loughney into the starting line-up.
This is Connacht’s first trip to Scotland this season and they will be looking to rekindle the form which saw them beat the Newport Gwent Dragons in their Magners League opener last month.
Michael Bradley was admittedly disappointed with the westerners’ performance when they went down by 34-11 to the Llanelli Scarlets at Stradey Park last Friday.
“We had a good start in the game but in relation to playing Llanelli in Llanelli, you need to keep a tight reign on them. We did it for the first 20 minutes, then we had one or two loose passes and they capitalised,” he said.
At 13-3 at half-time, we were reasonably confident that if we could get some field position we’d do fine. It went to 13-6 and then we had a lineout in their 22 which they turned over and scored directly from, which gave us a mountain to climb after that.
“We had a couple of opportunities earlier on in the first half and if we’d taken them we could’ve put a lot of pressure on them. But we didn’t take them and as the game went on, Llanelli grew in confidence and the crowd got behind them and in the end they thoroughly deserved their victory.”
Bradley’s two changes to the side that started against the Scarlets see Keith Matthews come in to start on the left wing, in place of the unavailable Darren Yapp, and Ronan Loughney will take Robbie Morris’ place at tighthead prop.
There is a change on the replacements bench also with USA ‘A’ international Alipate Tuilevuka named in the matchday 22 for the first time for a competitive fixture.
CONNACHT: Peter Durcan; Ofisa Treviranus, Mel Deane, Aidan Wynne, Keith Matthews; Tim Donnelly, Conor McPhillips; Brett Wilkinson, Adrian Flavin (capt), Ronan Loughney, Michael Swift, David Gannon, Michael McCarthy, Johnny O’Connor, Colm Rigney.
Replacements: John Fogarty, Robbie Morris, John Muldoon, Ray Ofisa, Conor O’Loughlin, Danny Riordan, Alipate Tuilevuka.
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