On Friday in Italy, Connacht set themselves up for a nervy weekend. Beforehand it had all the hallmarks of another successful European adventure for Connacht. New places visited, another team conquered. If only. Situated on the west coast of the island of Sicily, the city of Catania has a population of around 300,000, and as you can imagine with the that figure in such a small space, they don't exactly have an awful lot of space to work with. As a result, it's a city with a typical Italian sprawl, unplanned and awkward, the kind of place that would be classified as grotty were it not for its uniqueness. It's the first time that Catania have appeared on the map of European rugby.

The local side have been in existence since 1963 but because of their remoteness from the rest of Italian rugby in the north of the country, they relied heavily on games against the crews of naval ships docking in the local port. Today, the club are really only able to be competitive because of a grant from the Italian national lottery that pays for all their away travel for Super 10 games.

Before that particular handout, the club had to take anything up to nine internal flights to take part in fixtures against the likes of Treviso, Viadana and Calvisano, the giants of the Italian game.

Their reduction in flights has, funnily enough, seen the club take flight.

Last year they made the semi-finals of the Super 10 for the first time and a place in the European Challenge Cup was their reward.

They've enjoyed themselves, on their home patch at any rate.

The hurt of three heavy away defeats has been curbed by a five-point defeat to Worcester at Stadio Santa Maria Goretti, and victories over both Montpellier and now Connacht at their functional inner-city home.

Friday night's effort was undoubtedly the best result of the lot, if only because Connacht had so much to play for heading into the game.

Michael Bradley's side needed five, and probably just four, points to guarantee a spot in the last eight of the competition but they were in for one hell of a surprise in Mafia country.

The biggest surprise of all in defeat was that the visitors were coasting after just 11 minutes, after Ted Robinson and Colm Rigney both crossed for tries, the second of which was converted by David Sleman. From there, however, Connacht became indisciplined, conceding far too many penalties and Catania ground their way to victory, despite Matt Lacey scoring two tries in the second-half to earn his side a second bonus point to add to the one garnished for losing the game by less than seven points.

"We're gutted, " said captain Andrew Farley afterwards.

"It's a huge disappointment but we gave away easy scores at vital times and you can't do that away from home in this competition. After 11 minutes we were coasting but we probably switched off a little and in the end that cost us dear, even if we had enough possession to still win the game in the second-half."

No matter, they can thank their friends on Tyneside for getting them out of this particular hole.