Pete Wilkins has had plenty of time to reflect on his first year in charge of Connacht.
A disappointing season fizzled out with a 26-point hammering at the hands of Leinster and they would eventually finish the BKT URC season in 11th place, missing out on Champions Cup qualification as a result.
Their European adventures weren't any better. They raised the roof at the Dexcom Stadium when Bristol came to visit last January but otherwise, were comfortably second best when they faced Bordeaux, Saracens, Lyon, and Benetton when they dropped to the Challenge Cup.
The Englishman may have felt they were cursed when new marquee signing Santi Cordero went down in his first training session, a bad knee injury keeping him until the final two games.
Mack Hansen’s shoulder injury in January threatened to get better each week but in the end, he wasn’t risked. The Ireland wing is due to make his comeback in the next couple of weeks.
Then JJ Hanrahan went down over in Wales against Dragons at the start of May and he won’t be back until the New Year.
As easy as it would be to blame all their misfortunes on that run of bad luck, Wilkins is honest enough to admit Connacht still should have done better.
Just six more match points across the season would have had them in eighth place. They lost two games in the last minute.
"There was still a feeling that we didn’t give the best version of ourselves," he said.
About to start his eighth year with the province, Wilkins took over the top spot from Andy Friend in summer of 2023. He had previously served as assistant and then senior coach.
He’s spent most of the break reflecting on what went wrong with a particular emphasis on his own performance.
The 44-year-old makes an unconvincing attempt to suggest that he was able to switch off his rugby brain during a two-week family break but he was fooling no one.
"We gave the players a five, almost six-week break," he told RTE Sport.
"I spent a good two or three of that working through the season. Not only that, reflecting on my experience of my first year in a head coach role; what I thought going in and what I’d learned that might be different of the same and what I would reboot in terms of myself as a leader.
"It was a big reflection period there.
"I got away with the family for two weeks after that, I was able to switch off, more or less.
"And then came back and the final week was ramping to prepare for pre-season to come.
"I needed the six weeks, there’s a huge amount of reflection and self-review.
"As a leader you can demand all sorts of different things from your team and build a team in whatever image you like but ultimately unless you spend that time trying to understand yourself and the spirit with which you want to operate and the spirit you want the team to play with, you are not building something on very firm foundations.
"Now I just can’t wait to get going."
Wilkins (above) revealed he has been "engaging with non-rugby mentors" in recent years to get that "different take" on common problems.
So, does that mean the players and staff are going to see a different Pete Wilkins this year?
He reckons there was too much micro-management, too much time spent in the "weeds".
"You go into that first year as a head coach with a really clear plan about how you want to go about it," he continued.
"You’ve interviewed for the role pretty thoroughly, you’ve presented on your vision for the team, how you are going to go about things.
"You go in with all the neatest of plans on paper but once you actually get into the job itself, you start to understand what really makes a difference, what doesn’t make a difference.
"But also, that it’s simply not possible to do everything.
"A large part of my reflection was how much time I spent down in the weeds, I suppose, delivering different aspects of the programme, trying to solve everything.
"Ultimately as a leader you need a chance to step back and see the bigger picture and try and shape the behaviours of everything around you.
"There’s a harsh reality when you have to start working out the things you can’t change and maybe you have to empower other people to deliver on your behalf and really support them in that, to give yourself a chance and a space to lead.
"You have the greatest plan on paper but until you’ve lived the role for a year, the ups and downs of that year and seeing where you finished the season and how you deal with that, reflect on that and how you build for next season.
"Until you’ve done that, there’s nothing like it.
"I’m better prepared than I ever was. It doesn’t mean that everything’s going to be perfect moving forward, it does mean I’m better set up going into year two."
Hansen will return to action ahead of their opening URC match against Munster on 21 September and Wilkins has Josh Murphy back in harness after the former Leinster back row took a year out to complete his studies.
All Black-cap Josh Ioane is new on board to duel it out with Jack Carty for the 10 shirt and the likes of scrum-half Matthew Devine and centre Hugh Gavin are expected to push hard for action.
Former U20s star Gavin (above) has yet to feature for the senior Connacht side but after being moved up from the academy, is expected to get his chance.
Wilkins said: "He has had a terrific two years (with the Ireland Under-20s). I think that last campaign, he showed that, respectfully, he has outgrown that level of rugby.
"I thought he was fantastic, and he is ready to play for us – to put it bluntly.
"I see him as a '12' that has the ability to play elsewhere in the backline – certainly in that first U20s year when he played on the wing and he showed he can do a role there.
"So, we want to use him. We want to get him involved.
"We will certainly use him in preseason in those three games.
"I am really excited to see him play. He may well have had opportunities last season were it not for the amount of quality centres that we had, so in some ways he’s young, but he’s also overdue a chance."
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