Dragons were left to rue three missed opportunities from clean line breaks in the opening quarter as the Irish hosts then blitzed them with a trio of quick-fire tries before the break at the Sportsground.
Jackman’s men rallied after the interval and responded with tries of their own from fit-again Hallam Amos, playing in the centre, and Taine Basham.
However, the damage was already done and Jackman insisted afterwards the defence needed to sharpen up if the team was to secure any success in the Guinness PRO14.
“We were very frustrated that we didn’t take the chances,” he said.
“We identified a few potential opportunities in the Connacht defence and made the line breaks. But we didn’t capitalise and the worst thing was we didn’t kill the play either.
“We didn’t take the two-on-one and then didn’t ensure we restarted with our scrum. We’ve made a line break, our defence is not organised and then Connacht come right back at us.
“You have to credit their hunger and ambition to go from deep, but to have the wind in the first half and be that far behind was a very, very difficult situation for us.
“At half-time we spoke about showing character because that game could have got out of control. If we dropped our heads, the way they were attacking, it could have been even worse than it was.
“I have to credit the leaders in the team, they didn’t drop their heads and they rallied the troops and we had a better second half. But it was an incredibly disappointing first half.
“We compounded errors with errors. We had a big wind but didn’t have enough composure around our set piece and some of our breakdown work to play the game in Connacht’s half.”
Dragons had shipped the bonus point by the break in Galway and ended up conceding five tries to the clear frustration of Jackman.
“We’re giving away tries too easily and that is what is costing us. We have to fix that,” he vowed.
“We have more strength in depth now, but there are areas of our game that unless we fix them we won’t win away from home and we won’t win at home.
“We felt last week (against Ulster) was a good marker for us and the boys got confidence from that. But we conceded soft tries then too.
“You can’t go away from home and concede five or six tries and win and be competitive – it’s not going to happen. That is the focus for November.
“We have got to make teams work for their tries. That is no disrespect to Connacht, they were clinical, but realistically you saw how hard we had to work for our last try with 30 phases.
“We’ve got to make it better,” he added. “The pressure is there all the time, we have just got to work hard and stick together.”
