Connacht will conclude their pre-season campaign when they take on NEC Harlequins at The Stoop on Friday evening.  

This will be Connacht’s fourth pre-season clash as the countdown continues to the September 21st opening game of the Magners League at home to Newport Gwent Dragons.

The league kicked off in Wales last weekend when the Dragons scored a surprise 30-23 win over Llanelli — their first win in nine visits to Stradey Park. Cardiff defeated the Ospreys 17-15 in the other encounter.

Connacht, with encouraging displays against South Africa and Castres under their belt, will bring a full squad to London for Friday’s game and coach Michael Bradley is looking forward to the encounter.

“They play a nice brand of rugby. We played Harlequins last year in the Challenge Cup and we had two very good games against them, in particular the game here and it came down to the last minute of the match to decide who was going to win.

“There are certain areas of our game that we’re very pleased with, we’ve been very disciplined in our defence, we’ve been very disciplined in giving away penalties, but we need to work a little bit in terms of securing first phase, which is probably due to moving the team around a lot, guys moving on and off the park making it hard to get consistency there.

Meanwhile, new signing Andy Dunne looks set to miss the first six games of the Magners League after picking up a knee injury.
The 27 year old fly-half, who joined Connacht from Leinster after spells with NEC Harlequins and Bath, is likely to be out for ten weeks.

The former Ireland U-21, who crowned his Connacht debut two weeks ago with a penalty against South Africa, is not likely to be back until mid-November.

That means he will miss the Magners League opener against Newport Gwent Dragons and the next five games against Llanelli, Glasgow, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Leinster.

Meanwhile, Johnny O’Connor scored two tries but it was not enough to oust Castres in a well-contested pre-season friendly at the Sportsground on Saturday.

O’Connor struck early and late to cross the French line but Castres, 17-3 winners when the sides met on Tuesday, scored four tries in the second-half.

O’Connor’s opening try after five minutes helped Connacht to a 10-0 lead with Tim Donnelly adding the conversion and a penalty.

But Castres hit back after the break and scored two tries in as many minutes from Uruguay international Rodrigo Cao Ortega and flanker Alex Bias to go 14-10 in front after 53 minutes.

They added further tries in the final quarter from Florian Faure and Luc Ducalcon before O’Connor finished a move which started inside their own 22 by Ofisa Treviranus and Conor McPhillips at the end of a good workout.

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