Connacht’s famous win will always be associated with the name of Jack Carty. With Bundee Aki the titanic talisman, and the kicker who began the game with a European strike rate of 45% this season only to nail the last kick of the game, Connacht have their heroes who will go down in Galway folk lore.
But if you want to look beyond the theory of the colossus whose powers can change matches and seek outcomes in moments and not men, the best place to start looking would be the period between the 24th and 34th minute. In the 24th minute Tiernan O’Halloran was sin-binned for a cynical piece of ball killing at a breakdown mere metres from the Connacht line.
Wasps, at this stage, led 7-3. The decision was made by the inspiring captain, Joe Launchbury, to go for the Irish jugular. Three points were to be spurned on a few occasions in the period when Wasps had their one-man advantage.
Instead they kicked to the corner, seeking a second try which would have put them 12-3 or 14-3 ahead. Given the power of the Wasps bench, this would have been a lead to more than offset the incredible intangible that was the passionate home crowd.
All the momentum was with the English team but time and again they came up short as men like skipper, John Muldoon, found ways to hold up, or better still, steal ball within a stretched arm of the try line. Gary Kasparov, the former world chess champion, believes that when a chess player has the momentum he has to take match winning advantage, otherwise the counterattack of the opponent, will be inevitable and often deadly. So it proved in Galway.
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The siege was lifted as Matt Healy made a half break on his own 22m line. Who else but Aki was on hand to take the popped pass and power 40 metres up the field. The momentum had been turned to such an extent that a few metres later Carty was kicking a penalty from beneath the Wasps posts to narrow the score to 7-6.
By the time O’Halloran rejoined the action, the gap, instead of having been stretched, was narrowed to one point. As half-time approached, Connacht struck with a match-winning blow. Carty’s cross kick in Wasps 22 was neatly gathered by replacement wing, Danie Poolman for a try that sent Connacht bouncing into the home changing rooms with an unlikely 13-7 advantage.
Had Wasps made the most of their momentum between the 24th and 34th minute the drip-drip of penalties from the boot of Jimmy Gopperth before the try of Josh Bassett would have been sufficient cushion to see them to an away victory.
The ability to withstand the siege, to strike back with their own deadly counterattack was made possible by the belief that sent them into half-time in the lead. Aki said post-match, “this team refuses to die.” That is all well and good but unless they were still within striking distance their efforts would have been of the heroic in defeat nature.
He and Carty were the Colossus of the evening but this game was won and lost when Connacht rode the Wasps momentum and struck back in a 15-minute first-half spell.