Having been beaten to the punch by Leinster in their pursuit of the DLSP outhalf Simon Broughton, Connacht have had better joy in their latest two-way fight for another of the Kilternan Kiwi colony, Shane Stephens.
The elusive centre cum-full back returned from New Zealand on Monday for his third season with the club and linked up with Connacht yesterday, putting him in line for a place in Steph Nel's squad, at the very least, for Saturday's visit of Munster to the Sportsground.
This follows Connacht's timely capture of Stephens' ex-Bay of Plenty, and current DLSP, teammate Rowen Frost last week. Frost made his debut last Friday against Munster at Thomond Park as a first-half replacement for Colm Rigney and with the Connacht captain and lock Mark McConnell suspended for another five weeks, the 24-year-old second-rower can fill a potentially huge void for Nel, all the more so as he qualifies as a domestic player through four years' residency here.
Stephens will only be eligible through residency as an Irish-qualified player next season, for Connacht's purposes at any rate (though does so this year for DLSP in the All-Ireland League) but with one of the province's overseas' players, McConnell, sidelined for another five weeks, Nel needn't juggle his foreign players for a while yet.
The 25-year-old Stephens can also fill either of a couple of voids caused by long-term injuries to Connacht's contracted full backs, Tom Keating and Simon Allnutt, and short-term injury to centre and vice-captain Mervyn Murphy.
As an exciting, elusive and penetrating runner, a straw poll of most AIB League first division coaches would have had Stephens on their team of the year last season, yet he has been curiously overlooked by Leinster for the past couple of seasons.
Ironically, Leinster had expressed an interest in having Stephens link up with them this week, but Connacht's first approach, coupled with the more concrete offer of a part-time contract, held sway. His club coach Philip Werahiko, far from concerned by the sudden demands on Broughton, Frost and Stephens, happily welcomes the trend.
"It gives me the opportunity to play some of the other players in the Kitty O'Shea championship. I played a couple of the under-20s in our win over Skerries last Saturday and that's the only way they can develop," says Werahiko.
"I've always tried to encourage the development of all our players and for Simon, Rowen and now Shane this is an opportunity to play at a higher level of rugby. They're getting motivation and the club is getting a ton of mileage out of it."
Aside from Broughton, who signed in the off-season from Ballymena, joining up with established New Zealanders at DLSP such as Bruce Wood, Tony Giles, Frost and Stephens, Werahiko has also brought in a Kiwi scrumhalf Mark Cross (from Dromore) and a back five forward Andy Wood (brother of Bruce).
Though Werahiko readily laughs at the joke doing the rounds that DLSP are going to do the haka before AIL games, he points out that the Kiwi colony are all Irish qualified (ironically, Romanian full-back Mihai Vioreanu is their overseas' player) and "all of them are also committed to playing with the club for at least two or three years. Otherwise we wouldn't have signed them."
Not surprisingly, the winds of change are gradually shifting through Connacht's ranks following Nel's arrival. Another new signing set to link up with them later this week is a South African winger Wayne Mun, while both Connacht and Munster are interested in Old Crescent's South African-born, Irish qualified back-rower Gavin Schuman.
With the Connacht-Munster return match being the first Saturday fixture of the Guinness Interprovincial Championship, both managements are likely to delay the announcement of their sides until tomorrow or Thursday. Munster report a clean bill of health, with Anthony Horgan coming back into contention after the bout of flu which forced his late withdrawal from last Friday's win, when he was replaced by flanker cum-occasional winger Colm McMahon.
