Connacht boss Andy Friend delighted with play-off push after tough start

Andy Friend admits Connacht's achievement of reaching the BTK United Rugby Championship play-offs is especially pleasing following their winless start to the campaign.

With the Sportsground undergoing renovations to install a 4G pitch, the Westerners travelled to Belfast, Cape Town and Pretoria in their first three games and returned without so much as single bonus point to their name.

They got up and running upon their seasonal bow in Galway with a win over Munster and mixed good and bad until the New Year, where they have put together six league victories in a row – their best run since the 2015/16 season when they won the Pro12.

Saturday evening's 38-19 win over Cardiff secured a play-off place, while they need to beat Glasgow next weekend to secure a Champions Cup spot for next season.

"We set out every year to reach the play-offs," the Australian, who will leave at the end of the season, told reporters after the match.

"We always say we want to be contenders, we want to be in contending positions to be in the knock-out stages.

"We did it for Europe. We'd love to have gone another to get to the quarter-finals but we didn’t.

"We’re definitely in it? Brilliant. But now we’ve got to go again because you want to try and climb that ladder as high as you can.

"Respectfully, you don’t want to be finishing eighth, you don’t want to go up to bloody Dublin and play those blokes [table-topper Leinster]. You don’t.

"So we don’t want to finish there, we want to finish somewhere else. Where that is, that will probably be determined by probably us and others.

"But, again, you get to this stage of the season and you want to keep winning, so that’s our job to try and do next week."

Glasgow are practically locked in fourth place and also have a