Newport's hopes fade as Connacht win at Rodney Parade

Newport became the latest Welsh team to perish at the hands of shock Irish side Connacht at Rodney Parade last night.

Irish supremecy in the Irish League continued as Newport turned in a well below par performance. Connacht were lively throughout, but Newport were still inept in attack, their handling shocking and qualification for the quarter finals is now a remote possibility.

Newport made all the early running, Forster, Popham and Anthony combining in one thrust and Burn twice making breaks.

Each time Connacht held out and still managed to counter as they lived up to the form which has earned them victories over Cardiff and Neath.

Newport's pressure was rewarded when Strange kicked an easy penalty after 12 minutes, but Connacht's reply two minutes later when McHugh also landed a penalty.

Newport suffered a further blow when skipper Simon Raiwalui was sin binned for a high tackle which laid out opposite number McConnell. McHugh made it a double punishment when he put the resultant penalty over to give Connacht the lead.

But Newport didn't concede any points while Raiwalui was off and even countered with a well judged pass by Strange and a sharp run by Watkins.

Back up to full strength, Newport attacked hard and when Connacht were pulled up for off side Strange landed his second penalty to put the scores level again.

And Newport conceded a soft try on the stroke of half time when Burn's lobbed pass was intercepted by winger Munn who raced clear form a queue to convert and give Connacht a 13-6 lead.

Connacht lost McHugh after two minutes of the second half, replaced by former Ireland favourite Elwood, but almost immediately they had flanker O'Connor yellow carded for diving in.

Yellow cards continued to flow and Newport hooker Young was next for punching, Elwood cooly slotting the penalty.

Again when down Newport threatened through a lovely run by Uijs only for Jones-Hughes to knock on badly. Newport did rouse themselves, Garvey, who had replaced injury victim Ceri Jones, denied a close-in try by the referee.

Watkin and Strange were nearly over in the corner before Buxton, Howarth and Voyle belatedly went on, though Howarth immediately put two passes on the floor.

He made amends with a penalty four minutes from the end, though yet another yellow card followed when Bracken offended only for Howarth to miss the long range penalty attempts.

Newport tried again and in the last minute player of the match Andrew Powell shrugged off two tackles to score in the corner, but Howarth's conversion attempt drifted wide.

Howarth had one more chance deep into injury time, but amid deathly silence he missed the kick.