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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Sport
Michael Scully

Andy Friend says Connacht must be better professionals to make the leap to Leinster's level

Gutted Andy Friend insists he has to get to the bottom of Connacht's schizophrenic nature after their Euro dream died in Dublin.

After the round of 16 first leg at the Sportsground, Friend told his team that he didn't think Leinster were better players than them. Connacht came to the Aviva Stadium with hopes of causing a massive shock.

But what yesterday's hiding confirmed to the Aussie is that in terms of professionalism, Connacht still have to make a leap to compete with the four-time champions.

"They're better prepared in terms of they're better professionals and that's our next big step up, we need to be better professionals," said Friend.

"That rests with me, I own that so I'll keeping driving that and make sure we do because there are some very fine footballers in that Connacht jersey and we just need to see more consistency.

"If we get that we'll be more consistent in how we conduct ourselves.

"The reality is we won one out of our six games, and we were competitive in more of those, in five of those, but that one today definitely knocks the wind out of your sail.

"Listen, if we're really honest, it's the way we conduct ourselves on a weekly basis.

"Sometimes we're really good in our prep and in the way we review and challenge each other and other times we're not - and we know the on-field performance is usually a fair reflection of what's happening off field.

"So that's for us as a collective and certainly for me as the head coach to drive our standards really harder.

"That was the message to the players - I actually had seen in the last two weeks a greater endeavour to be professional in the way we go about our preparation, so don't lose that because of that loss, we actually have to keep that more."

Connacht jet off to South Africa on Sunday for their URC fixtures and Friend acknowledges that while mathematically his side can make the quarter-finals, "realistically it's a fairly long shot".

Having played both Leinster and Leicester, who are now expected to meet in the last eight in Europe, Friend said: "I think that's going to be hell of a battle.

"Leicester need to win again tomorrow but that would be worth buying a ticket for, that one, two really good footy teams - we seem to draw good footy teams, don't we?"

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