Lancaster warns Connacht must sort out discipline

Their superb late run last season, winning eight of their last night league games, secured a return to Europe’s premier competition.

The Champions Cup has lost a lot of its aura, with a disjointed schedule and a convoluted qualification system where each team plays two home and two away games but not play against the other team from their domestic league.

In Connacht’s case that’s the Lions from Johannesburg, but they will host Saracens and Toulouse and travel to Exeter and La Rochelle. The second round will take place in December with the games against the French on successive weekends in January.

As Lancaster pointed out during the week, they failed to qualify with two wins from four when he was in charge of Racing 92 while Ulster, with just one win in four, made it through to the last 16.

But Lancaster said there is excitement about being back in the Champions Cup, not least as they are taking on four former winners.

“Saracens coming to Galway is amazing for us and there's a lot of lessons we can learn from this that we know we need to take into that Champions Cup,” he said.

That excitement, though, will be tempered by a sluggish start to the season. They left Glasgow empty-handed after a 33-19 loss on Friday night, having also failed to pick up a point at home to the Stormers, with only a late win over Benetton to show for their efforts so far.

They have had major problems on maul defence which in turn has led to a high penalty count. They have conceded 43 penalties in their three games to date, winning just 22 penalties themselves.

And while decisions like the failure to punish a high hit on Shayne Bolton against Glasow rankles, Connacht can hardly argue about conceding an average of 14.3 penalties per game, while winning just 7.3 penalties themselves.

Penalty counts don’t always reflect outcomes —Connacht were awardedonly three against Benetton but still won — but what hasbeen clear so far this season is how teams have scored maul tries off penalties against Lancaster’s men since the rule changes, with four of Glasgow’s five coming that way on Friday night.

Lancaster revealed he had spoked to the URC referee’s manager Tappe Henning during the day on Friday to get clarity, but it’s inevitable now that teams are going to target Connacht through this route.

“So we need to figure that out and make sure that we're not giving away as many penalties, because the way the game is at the moment, you give away a penalty, it leads to a maul, which leads to pressure and leads to points. So clearly that's the area we need to work on,” said Lancaster.