father and brother in Connacht’s defeat by Ulster<\/a> over the festive period, has now scored seven tries in 10 games since joining the Westerners from Leinster last summer.<\/p>\nLyon’s Fijian hooker Sam Matavesi crossed in the first half but Connacht pulled further clear early in the second half with Josh Murphy scoring before his namesake completed his treble. <\/p>\n
Thibaut Regard and Guillaume Marchand were also on target for the Top 14 side in the second half but Jack Aungier, Dylan Tierney-Martin and Shamus Hurley-Langton ensured a Connacht rout in Galway.<\/p>\n
It was a much-needed boost for Connacht in their first outing since Ireland wing Mack Hansen’s three-match ban for criticising match officials in last month’s United Rugby Championship loss to Leinster.<\/p>\n
Connacht, who have taken a maximum 15 points in this season’s competition, travel to Cardiff in the final round of pool games on Friday (20:00 GMT) knowing that a home tie in the last-16 is already sealed.<\/p>\n
Connacht: <\/b>S Cordero; C Mullins, P O’Conor, B Aki, S Jennings; J Ioane, B Murphy; P Dooley, D Heffernan, F Bealham; O Dowling, J Joyce; C Prendergast (capt), S Hurley-Langton, S Jansen.<\/p>\n
Replacements: <\/i>Duggan, Tierney-Martin, Aungier, J Murphy, P Boyle, C Forde, D Hawkshaw, C Blade.<\/p>\n
Lyon:<\/b> A Tchaptchet; S Radradra, J Maraku, T Regard, V Rattez; F Smith, M Page-Relo; H Kaabeche, S Matavesi, I Aptsiauri; F Lambey (capt), T Lavanini; S Blanc-Mappaz, M Okuya, M Gouzou.<\/p>\n
Replacements: <\/i>Ainsley, Marchand, Pakihivatau, Geraci, PS Pacheco, Parisien, Meliande, Cassang.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Murphy scored a hat-trick as Connacht hammered Lyon in the Challenge Cup to secure top spot in pool 1 with a game to spare. Scrum-half Murphy, who signed a contract extension earlier this week, bagged two tries before half-time with Sean Jansen and Finlay Bealham scores sealing the bonus point before the break. Murphy, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9262,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9260\/revisions\/9262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}