‘John Muldoon was injured all week and didn’t train’
CONNACHT HEAD COACH Pat Lam revealed some of the desperate measures being taken by his squad to help the province cope through their current injury crisis.
The defending champions, who work off a lighter base of resources than their three neighbours, were without 22 players going in to the New Year’s Eve loss to Munster. And Lam will arrive in the Sportsground today expecting a few more men added to the absentee list.
A thigh injury threatened to keep captain John Muldoon out of Saturday’s inter-pro, but Lam says the captain and his protégé Sean O’Brien both struggled through the week before making themselves available for matchday and the visit of Munster.
“Sean O’Brien got injured on Tuesday and was a big doubt from then, so he wasn’t able to train for the rest of the week,” said Lam.
“John Muldoon was injured all week and didn’t train, so Eoin McKeon trained on Tuesday, then him and James Connolly both went down with vomiting bugs on Wednesday, so they’re both gone.
“It was just (Saturday) morning that we had to check who was going to be fit and available. They did a test on Mul and he was confident that he could get through it, so Mul played without training. Then Sean O’Brien went on the bench, after getting injured in training on Tuesday.”
While the willingness of players to play through the pain barrier is commendable, the situation is obviously far from ideal. Lam’s ethos at Connacht has been based on fluid movement and familiarity with the system. As he delves further down the depth chart, that becomes increasingly difficult with players unable to forge habits in training.
Source: James Crombie/INPHO
“I’ve always said that what we do on the weekend is on the back of the quality of the training we do during the week,” the Samoan said on Saturday evening.
“The real difficulty at the moment is that we can’t get the quality of training that we need to.”
Despite all their problems, Connacht still created try-scoring opportunities in a 9 – 16 loss to the league’s in-form team.
‘I think we have a lot of potential’ – Erasmus keeps Munster feet on groundLam says Connacht are looking for reinforcements as injury toll rises