Mike Blair said Edinburgh know their season now hangs on getting a result in Leicester on Friday after again paying the price for their wastefulness in Galway.

Their slim hopes of making the URC play-offs disappeared as Connacht were more clinical in their 41-26 victory and Blair now has to get his players to re-group to try to topple the Tigers in their own backyard.

Blair said they started addressing the task they now face in the dressing room at the Sportsground on Saturday and will be giving it a right good shot.

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“We’ve spoken already as a group there about not being good enough, but we all understand that we have to be at the top of our game physically and mentally to challenge top quality teams.

“I believe that we have the quality of player, we’ve shown in our performances in Europe that we can do it, so we need now to turn it around for Friday.

“We’re really disappointed. We didn’t play at the level we expect with the quality of players we had on the pitch. We gave the ball away to Connacht too easily when we had them under pressure and they scored too easily when they got down to our third of the pitch. A disappointing day.”

Blair will have the likes of Pierre Schoeman, Jamie Ritchie, Duhan van der Merwe and Hamish Watson back for the trip to Mattioli Woods Welford Road and was not aware of any new injuries from the weekend’s encounter.

Edinburgh enjoyed plenty of possession in the opening half of the game on Saturday, but Connacht were much more clinical and led 20-7 having played with the breeze.

Impressive Connacht centre Cathal Forde cut them open for an early try and they built on it with an effort from flanker Conor Oliver to lead 15-0 at the end of the opening quarter.

Edinburgh finally got over after a fourth penalty to the corner was worked across the field and then back in before Fijian tighthead Lee-Roy Atalifo finished the seventh surge at the line beside the left post.

But then Connacht scrum-half Caolin Blade intercepted a Blair Kinghorn pass inside his 22 before sprinting down field to score to extend their lead at the interval.

Jarrad Butler secured the bonus point with a try after 45 minutes and while Connacht lost Conor Oliver and Oisin Dowling to the sin-bin and conceded tries to Bill Mata and Glen Young when Edinburgh had the numerical advantage to cut the gap to 27-19, Connacht re-grouped and pushed on when full-back Emiliano Boffelli joined Dowling in the bin.

Blade scored twice in three minutes to complete his hat-trick, the fifth time in six games that a Connacht player has scored three.

He nudged over from close range and then pouncing on a loose ball after a counter-attack mounted by a superb rip by replacement Shane Jennings on Mata inside his own 22.

Edinburgh grabbed a try bonus point through Kinghorn in the dying moments.

“We were playing into a bit of a breeze and had talked about holding on to the ball a little bit more,” added Blair.

“There were a couple of kickable opportunities that we could have used, but dropped a couple of balls on the edge coming up to half time when we had climbed our way back into it at 15-7.

“The second half we thought it would have looked a lot better but we did get back into the game.

“Before the yellow I had good belief in us winning the game.

We looked stronger, I would have been questioning that at half time.”