Paul Boyle insists that Connacht are on the right track despite their slow start to the season.
Last Friday night's shut-out loss to Leinster was their fourth in five games, their only victory coming against Munster the previous week.
The westerners failed to put a dent on the scoreboard at the Sportsground against their provincial rivals but Boyle was encouraged by the fight in the performance.
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“Confidence is hit when you don’t front up physically," he said. "If I’m sitting here and we’ve been beaten by a team that has run over the top of us then yes, it is a confidence thing.
"When we front up physically and it is those small errors - when I jumped in a lineout, the ball slipped straight through my hands. There's no accounting for that, no reason for that, that is just an individual error and I've got to be better.
“If someone had run over the top of me then I have got to be coming in here and saying, yes our confidence has gone. But fronting up physically against Leinster is probably the easy part because you are so motivated.
“Can we back it up physically? Can we fix those small individual errors? I really do think we will be in a good place if we do that.”
In mitigation it has been a very tough start to the campaign in terms of fixtures for Andy Friend's side - they started away to Ulster, then played two games in South Africa before facing Munster and Leinster in Galway.
Connacht will target two wins to finish this opening block off, at home to Scarlets next Friday before an away trip to Ospreys.
But Boyle cautioned: “No game is going to be easy. We have seen that with certain results - Zebre, Treviso are going really well.
"We have really got to focus on ourselves and fronting up physically week in and week out and fixing those small errors, getting entries into the 22, that is a real positive as that is the hardest thing to do.
"As Friendy has said, finishing off, that should be the easy part.
“We will just focus on ourselves and keep improving each week.”
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