Connacht secured a bonus point deep into overtime as they clinched a 31-15 United Rugby Championship victory at Zebre.<\/p>\n
Oisin McCormack finished a driving maul in the 11th minute of stoppage time to secure a maximum five-point haul, but Stuart Lancaster’s team were made to work for the win.<\/p>\n
Zebre finished the first half 3-0 ahead but the scoreline failed to reflect an open game, with the hosts particularly willing to attack from deep and Connacht guilty off overplaying.<\/p>\n
However, it took the visitors just 41 seconds after the interval to get off the mark as Joe Joyce pounced when a clearance was charged down.<\/p>\n
Number eight Sean Jansen crossed twice but Zebre were tenacious, hitting back in the 56th minute when scrum-half Gonzalo Garcia dummied and touched down with an outstretched arm.<\/p>\n
A powerful run from Bautista Stavile kept the hosts in touch and in a sign of the tension in Parma, Sam Gilbert landed a 79th-minute penalty to keep Connacht out of reach.<\/p>\n
Zebre centre Marco Zanon was sent to the sin bin for a deliberate knock-on and Connacht eventually got the bonus through McCormack, with Gilbert adding the extras.<\/p>\n
Zebre: G Montemauri; M Belloni; G Bertaccini, M Zanon; S Gesi; M Roger Farias, G Garcia; P Buonfiglio, G Ribaldi, E Pieretto; M Canali, L Krumov (capt), G Ferrari, I Bianchi, D Ruggeri<\/p>\n
Replacements: S Klein, L Franceschetto, J Pitinari, F Carrera, A Ortombina, T Dominguez, E Lucchin, B Stavile.<\/p>\n
Connacht: S Gilbert; S Jennings; H West, C Forde; C Mullins; J Ioane, C Blade; J Duggan, D Tierney-Martin, J Aungier; J Murphy, J Joyce, P Boyle (capt), S O’Brien, S Jansen.<\/p>\n
Replacements: M Victory, P Dooley, F Barrett, D O’Connor, N Murray, B Murphy, S Naughton, O McCormack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Connacht secured a bonus point deep into overtime as they clinched a 31-15 United Rugby Championship victory at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-274307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}