Head Coach Pat Lam has named his side for the opening round of the GUINNESS PRO12 against Newport Gwent Dragons at the Sportsground tomorrow night, KO 7:30pm.<\/p>\n
Academy centre Rory Parata will make his PRO12 debut after starting in two pre-season games against Castres and Munster. Bundee Aki will partner the 21-year-old in midfield. <\/p>\n
Up front new flanker Nepia Fox-Matamua earns his first cap in a Connacht jersey starting in a back row with captain John Muldoon and Number 8 Eoghan Masterson.<\/p>\n
Former Leinster lock Ben Marshall is likely to be sprung from the bench for his first official Connacht appearance.<\/p>\n
Commenting on the team selection and the upcoming game, Lam said:<\/p>\n
“After a rigorous but successful pre-season, the players really made selection difficult for us ahead of tomorrow’s game and that was pleasing.<\/p>\n
“I’m delighted for young Rory Parata who has had a good off-season and impressed in the warm-up games. It just highlights that if you put the work in your chance will come.<\/p>\n
“It’s always a tight and physical battle with the Dragons and we’re expecting nothing different tomorrow night with both sides looking to get off to a flying start.”<\/p>\n
Connacht 15 – 9: Tiernan O’Halloran, Danie Poolman, Rory Parata, Bundee Aki, Matt Healy, Jack Carty, Kieran Marmion<\/p>\n
1 – 8: Denis Buckley, Tom McCartney, Rodney Ah You, Quinn Roux, Andrew Browne, John Muldoon (captain), Nepia Fox-Matamua, Eoghan Masterson<\/p>\n
Replacements: Dave Heffernan, JP Cooney, Finlay Bealham, Ben Marshall, Eoin McKeon, John Cooney, Craig Ronaldson, Fionn Carr<\/p>\n
Unavailable \/ Injured: Nathan White, Ronan Loughney, Jake Heenan, Dave McSharry, Api Pewhairangi, Niyi Adeolokun, Darragh Leader, Robbie Henshaw.<\/p>\n
CONNACHT v NEWPORT GWENT DRAGONS
\nFriday September 4th
\nAt the Sportsground, 7:30pm <\/p>\n
Referee: Ben Whitehouse (WRU, 7th competition game)
\nAssistant Referees: Leo Colgan, Mark Connolly (both IRFU)
\nCiting Commissioner: John Cole (IRFU)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Head Coach Pat Lam has named his side for the opening round of the GUINNESS PRO12 against Newport Gwent Dragons at the Sportsground tomorrow night, KO 7:30pm. Academy centre Rory Parata will make his PRO12 debut after starting in two pre-season games against Castres and Munster. Bundee Aki will partner the 21-year-old in midfield. Up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1836],"tags":[33,992,1601,950,152],"class_list":["post-14899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","tag-connacht","tag-dragons","tag-fight","tag-name","tag-team"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14901,"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14899\/revisions\/14901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}