Connacht Rugby taking inspiration from Mayo’s All-Ireland triumph
Connacht Head Coach Stuart Lancaster
Connacht Rugby Head Coach Stuart Lancaster has reached out to Mayo manager Andy Moran and shown how Mayo have inspired them in their preparations for the upcoming season.
Lancaster described Mayo’s triumph as ‘brilliant’ and said the following day at training, they leaned on Mayo for inspiration.
“I said ‘what can we learn, what is it we can take from what Mayo did in that game?’ Everything. I think there were seven things we wrote down, we wrote them down on the board and I took a photo of what the lessons we had learned, that we thought we could apply to our season,” he told Off the Ball.
“I dropped Andy a message and said: ‘Just so you know, I know you’ve got a busy’ - his phone is exploding – ‘but just from coach to coach, well done, great coaching, unbelievable and, by the way you’ve inspired a lot of our lads and this is what we’ve learned from you guys’ which hopefully to him means a lot because we’re all in the west of Ireland together,” said Lancaster.
The former England manager said he has been keen to learn from Gaelic games since he came to Ireland and, more particularly, since he came to Galway.
“Since I’ve been over here, the Gaelic teams, the Galway hurlers, spent time with Micheál (Donoghue) and his team which was amazing. I’m hoping to get the Mayo coaches in once we get going in the season.
“It was brilliant, wasn’t it? I went to Croke Park the previous week and watched the hurling and obviously gutted for Galway but I was in Galway for the football final … I think people maybe think I don’t know so much about it but I’ve been here in Ireland for nearly ten years now so I do understand a lot more than people give me credit. I’m interested in the dynamics of teams.
“Anyway, Mayo won and we’ve got some Mayo lads in our team so it was a great way to start the Monday morning with the picture of the Sam Maguire and what it meant to the people of Mayo,” he said.
