Saturday's assignment against a depleted Ospreys presents Connacht with the chance to register back-to-back wins but Pete Wilkins is all too aware these are the games where they have slipped up in the past.
Having finished strongly to register a bonus-point success over the Scarlets last weekend, Connacht travel to Swansea to face an Ospreys side who will be without 15 first-teamers due to international call-ups and injuries.
Ending the first block of BKT United Rugby Championship fixtures with successive victories would be just the tonic after a testing start to the season, but a constant criticism of Connacht has been their inability to string a run of good performances together.
"We've been very fairly branded with that label of inconsistency in seasons gone by," said Connacht head coach Wilkins. "That’s a fair accusation.
"We've broken down those games where we’ve delivered one week as opposed to not delivering the following one, it has often been either a physical or mental intensity that been inconsistent or has wavered.
"That’s not to say there isn’t skill error sometimes or game plans we would adjust with hindsight, but there has been that yo-yoing of the intensity of our performances that we feel has cost us when we’ve failed to deliver in games we should have won.
"That’s definitely something that was a feature of our planning for this season."
Connacht have won three of their past four meetings with the Ospreys, including a 46-18 victory at the Sportsground last November. The Welsh side were without their international contingent for that one-sided loss and it will be a repeat this weekend, while Rhys Webb is also absent after failing a HIA during Sunday's derby loss to the Dragons.
"They could well have a large number of players missing but that actually has been a bigger banana skin for us in the past," said Wilkins.
"In general, when we've played against Welsh, Scottish and Italian teams when they have been missing internationals just before a Test window, that’s some of the times we’ve come unstuck most unforgivably in the past.
"That in itself is a red flag for us and we’ve acknowledged that with the group and laid the challenge down to them.
"It's really important to sign off this block with a win and I say that with full respect to the challenge that is going away to the Ospreys.
"If we come out of this seven-game block with three wins from the seven, we’d probably like it to be four to call that a par score, but if come out with three we’re not far off. There were plenty on the outside who were saying we’d struggle to win one out of these seven.
"If we get to November at 3-4 [wins-losses] we’ll feel we could have done a better job, but we’ll at least be moving in the right direction. A win is massive for us this week and we’ve been very open with the players in terms of addressing that."
Key to Connacht’s victory over the Scarlets was Conor Oliver. The former Munster flanker is now in his third season in Galway and delivered a man-of-the-match performance last Friday, frustrating the Scarlets at the breakdown while running some excellent support lines in attack.
"He is getting better with every game," said Wilkins. "He burst on the scene in terms of his Connacht career.
"Looking at last season, he’s a good example of a guy who played a lot of minutes in that first half of the season. It’s on us to make sure we manage him appropriately so that he doesn’t fall off a cliff come Christmas time, that he keeps firing on all cylinders all the way through to the spring and hopefully finals. We’re managing him better than we might have done previously.
"In terms of the abrasiveness, intensity and energy that he brings to the team, he is exactly the type of personality we want to build our game and identity around. He’s not the only one in that sense but he’s definitely a key part of that.
"As he’s getting more established here at Connacht, you’re also starting to get his voice coming out more and more behind the scenes in terms of driving the standards of some of the other players and demanding more from them, whether that’s in terms of performance or some of the detail around their game.
"He’s maturing nicely and will be very important to us on an ongoing basis this season."
Watch Munster v Ulster and Ospreys v Connacht in the BKT United Rugby Championship on Saturday 29 October from 4.45pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player
