Connacht head coach Pat Lam has hailed his team's season as one of growth despite defeat to Gloucester in the Champions Cup play-off qualifier.
The Westerners were beaten 40-32 after extra time by the Cherry and Whites at Kingsholm in a scintillating encounter of knock-out rugby.
Speaking afterwards Lam said: “There’s a lot positives. No-one really gave us a chance. There was a lot of front-liners missing. We’ve come off the back of a long season with the smallest squad and budget in the Pro12 and yet the boys produce performances like that.
“There’s a lot of growth in there. You take someone like Jack Carty, we’ve put him out there for development, and this year he’s been working and had a lot of games.
“I think how he performed today was on the back of a lot of that work.”
Connacht were leading the tie heading towards full-time in normal-time but a last-minute try from Gloucester’s Bill Meakes sent the match into extra-time, before the English side went on to win the game with two tries in the final five minutes.
In the lead-up to Meakes' try there appeared to be blocking but Lam refused to dwell on that controversial decision, saying: “The TMO made the call and it certainly looked like blocking to us. But we’ve just got to live with those calls and move on.”
“The TMO made the call and it certainly looked like blocking to us. But we’ve just got to live with those calls and move on” - Pat Lam
The former Samoan international instead put the emphasis on praising his charges and how close they came to pulling off an upset at Kingsholm.
“[I’m] absolutely proud of the boys effort but we’re all gutted we lost that game,” said Lam.
“Champions Cup is where we want to be and we wanted to get to that play-off final in Galway and we missed out by a whisker.
“We spoke about belief before the game. If you don’t believe you can win you’re wasting your time. We can take people on. We’ve beaten Toulouse away, we’ve beaten Leinster and Munster. We’ve beaten some big boys.
“We came in here determined that we can beat these guys and we gave it everything we could and we missed out at the end.”
Connacht’s position of seventh in the final Pro12 league table is still their best-ever league finish and with that much pride can be taken. Lam’s mind is now focused on the future and building further success rather than dwelling on this defeat.
“We build. The majority will be back next year. We build on what we’ve done. At the end of the day it’s the most successful season Connacht’s ever had and we need to improve on that next year and continue what we started,” said Lam
“There’s a lot of positives and a lot of young guys coming through. A lot of guys playing for Ireland. It’s a positive time in Connacht rugby.”
