Connacht senior assistant coach Rod Seib believes Will Connors “has real potential as a leader” after the province announced the signing of the 29-year-old backrow from Leinster on a two-year deal on Tuesday.

“I’ve seen Will’s ability first-hand and I know he’ll be another big asset to Connacht next season,” said Seib. “His tackling ability and defensive work-rate is well known, but he has real attacking strengths too, which I’m looking forward to developing.

“With a positive personality, he brings great energy to the group and has real potential as a leader.”

Connacht are coming off a huge weekend after the official opening of the redeveloped Dexcom Stadium, but the 34-23 defeat to Leinster – their fourth straight reverse in the URC – hit the players hard.

“Certainly the feeling and the changing room at the end of the game, the boys were gutted, absolutely gutted,” admitted Seib

“I thought we managed the game really quite well, but there were some isolated incidents that allowed Leinster to slip back into it. So we need to be making sure we don’t have those slips and have consistency throughout the 80 minutes.”

Seib believes the players need to park the result as they prepare for a significant away fixture against Zebre in Italy next Saturday.

Once a win in Parma was a given, but Seib knows their opponents will be ready and waiting in a bid to lift themselves from the bottom of the table.

“The danger for us is we had a physically and emotionally draining game on the weekend, and the boys were spent,” said Seib.

“We have to make sure we freshen the players up, and they’re in the right head space also. Because if our mindset is slightly off point, we’re going to get a right shock you know. So we need to make sure we’re emotionally and physically ready to play.”

Although Connacht need to add to their current poor return of just two league wins, boosted by seven bonus points, Seib says there is “certainly no panic” despite the fact they lie 14th in the table, just four points ahead of Zebre.

“The boys register the fact that we’ve got a really important game to get momentum moving in our direction, particularly as we go into a little bit of a break here. So we want to finish this block on a high.

“Obviously, when you look at the ladder, we want to be making sure we’re collecting maximum points from each weekend when we can.

“The reality is we know we need to be picking up wins, but there’s certainly no panic.”