Stuart Lancaster feels Connacht have plenty of room for improvement and says the hurt of his Racing 92 experience will spur him on.
The former Leinster coach was a surprise announcement as the Westerners new boss on Tuesday.
He takes over from Pete Wilkins, who departed the head coach role in April.
Connacht finished the BKT URC in 13th place and were knocked out of Europe in the Challenge Cup quarter-finals.
Lancaster, who was head coach of England between 2011 and 2015, departed Leinster in 2023 to take charge of Top 14 team Racing 92.
He left the Parisian club in February after a disappointing stint and is understood to have had plenty of interest from other countries, including Wales and Australia.
The 55-year-old said: "When I look at the quality of the players, the age-profile of the squad, the quality of the young players who are available, and knowing what I know about how to try and develop that group I think it's a really exciting opportunity for us to kick on now.
"You don’t want to make predictions too early but if we can improve the areas that are obvious to me, we can do better than last season.
"[We can] set ourselves the goal of qualifying for the play-offs, and Europe is a big one for me.
"Having had the experience of Leinster, and I guess the disappointment of Racing, about how it turned out for me, there’s a real desire in me to want to do well."
At Leinster, Lancaster was regarded as most effective as an innovative, 'tracksuit’ coach, and held in high esteem by the players who worked under him.
He said that Connacht’s recruitment from Harlequins of Billy Millard as their general manager of performance will give him the time and space to focus on game planning.
"A big plus of Billy coming to Connacht for me is that it will mean a lot of the managerial part of the job, which I don’t mind doing, and I ended up doing a lot of this in France, Billy and I can share, and Billy can take the lead on," he said.
"So it was a big plus for me to know that Billy was coming in that general manager role.
"With Willie [Ruane, chief executive] and Tim [Allnutt, head of rugby operations] and everyone else that’s here I feel there’s good support around me which means I can concentrate on the coaching."
On the prospects for next season, he said: "In my presentation to the panel, I did an analysis of last season and the end result in terms of the league table was not where anyone wanted to be but actually statistically, in a lot of the metrics, Connacht were very good so credit to the foundations that [former coaches] Mark Sexton, Pete, Scott Fardy had put in.
"Those guys did a great job and part of the attraction of coming was I felt the foundation is strong in terms of the quality of the squad.
"There will be tweaks I’d be thinking about in how we approach training and certain games and how we play but overall I think there’s a very good foundation."
New Connacht head coach Stuart Lancaster says he is hopes "to make a difference" in his new role pic.twitter.com/Jk9lwbYu8Z
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) June 4, 2025
Connacht fans will have a new stand at the Dexcom Stadium next season, as well as a new coaching ticket, which includes senior assistant Rob Seib.
"Keep doing what you are doing, your support is amazing; I’ve never been here once and not felt the passion," was Lancaster’s message to Connacht fans.
"There’s been tough times as well, but I think the stadium, the facilities, the new coaching team, the playing group is maybe similar but I’m confident we can get another 20, 30, 40% out of them so get behind the group.
"If you can draw that [fan] energy together, it’s an unbelievably hard place to come and win here, but then we need to be as good on the road as well.
"That’s the challenge but I’m excited and I hope supporters will be excited to see the team play."
Listen to the RTÉ Rugby podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Watch Leinster v Glasgow from 2.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app. Listen to live commentary on RTE Radio 1
