Connacht have not only arrived but quite clearly intend to stay. The province's launch of their Vision & Strategy (2016-2020) document in the Aviva Stadium yesterday boldly declared their intentions to become a regular diner at the Champions Cup table while increasing their indigenous players and their quotient of players in Ireland squads.
Connacht chief executive Willie Ruane also confirmed their intention to develop a modernised stadium with a capacity of about 10,000.
Entitled Grassroots to Green Shirts, the 28-page strategic plan, which will be on the club's website next month, outlines the objectives for each department while citing "big moves" for the organisation to strive towards.
"The strategic plan effectively charts the course for Connacht Rugby over the next four years. It's setting out what it is we're working towards, what we hope to achieve and how we are going to achieve it," said Ruane.
Main results
Asked what he would like to see as the main results of the plan, Ruane said: “I would like us to be a very significant part of the Irish team on a consistent basis, so that having five players on the pitch at one time isn’t something that stands out, it’s the norm; that the game across the province has grown to a very large extent and that the experience those kids are having is something that they absolutely cherish and want to continue playing the game.
“If that happens we’ll have positioned ourselves so that the next stage, the next journey and the next chapter will be a lot easier.”
As head coach Pat Lam said, some of the performance targets have already been reached. Yesterday's presentation, which was attended by Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt and IRFU high-performance director David Nucifora, was as much an indication of where Connacht have come from in the last four years as well as where they intend heading.
A closely aligned and clear-cut strategy requires the right structures which in turn requires the right people. With Ruane as chief executive, helped by a professional games board chaired by former scrum-half Conor McGuinness, and other former players such as Eric Elwood, Nigel Carolan and Gavin Duffy heading their clubs, academy and marketing departments, not to mention Lam at the helm of their coaching ticket, Connacht are a very different organisation compared to four years ago.
Extraordinary impact
Some of these figures, and eventually all, will move on, and such has been Lam’s extraordinary impact that, invariably, his name will be linked with vacancies such as at Bath.
Speaking the day before, Lam referred to “clauses and all that sort of stuff” in the remaining two years of his contract: “Mate, we’re in a fickle job. It’s professional rugby and you don’t know what’s around the corner,” he said.
But Ruane smiled and stated calmly: “I 100 per cent believe Pat will be in charge of the team next year. It isn’t something that I am genuinely concerned about.”
Key to it all, however, is a stadium fit for their ambitions, which Ruane said ought to be about the 10,000 mark and, ideally within the Sportsground. With demand exceeding supply for Connacht’s fourth home game running, Ruane said they could have doubled Saturday’s near 7,800 capacity, but rejected the idea of moving the game to Thomond Park.
“I think our own supporters deserve that, as much as anything else. We want to play in the Pro12 final and then when we’re in the Pro12 final, we want to win it. Anything that distracts from that, or has potential to, was ruled off the page pretty quickly,” he said.
